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<3 (:._.;t: aw ' ~ -_ c»,~';:v:.e:: ‘ 1. M . .1 " " a. -, \ "‘ ., ‘ ( V ’ — 7 * * — , ’ V _ ~" . V . 3, , y ‘ , P‘ v , - 5 . , 5- ' a v V I I . I ; . \‘ V _ 3 :3 D » ., / » ‘ O 4,. r. . 3 ‘V _ x ~. “ » , ; , ’*‘~ ’ A , , ‘ . .. \ 1 _, 4 _ - .3 "~ , . \ ., . « I 7 K . ‘ 1 . \ L. , V V - . ‘ ' _ [3 J4 .- 1» a ‘ A ‘ A ; ' w G o 1 ~ / , , - 4 / ': ~~,§§- 1» WHO WAS ELIZABETH CADY STANTON? 1815~1902 MY MOTHER By Margaret Stanton Lawrence In... Show more<3 (:._.;t: aw ' ~ -_ c»,~';:v:.e:: ‘ 1. M . .1 " " a. -, \ "‘ ., ‘ ( V ’ — 7 * * — , ’ V _ ~" . V . 3, , y ‘ , P‘ v , - 5 . , 5- ' a v V I I . I ; . \‘ V _ 3 :3 D » ., / » ‘ O 4,. r. . 3 ‘V _ x ~. “ » , ; , ’*‘~ ’ A , , ‘ . .. \ 1 _, 4 _ - .3 "~ , . \ ., . « I 7 K . ‘ 1 . \ L. , V V - . ‘ ' _ [3 J4 .- 1» a ‘ A ‘ A ; ' w G o 1 ~ / , , - 4 / ': ~~,§§- 1» WHO WAS ELIZABETH CADY STANTON? 1815~1902 MY MOTHER By Margaret Stanton Lawrence In 3 Parts. Part 1 Picture of Elizabeth Cady Stanton Mrs Stanton was the first person in the world to ask for votes for women, away back in 1848. And as the ballot has now been given to all the women of the United States, I thought this would be a good time to tell the rising generation of young people something about the home life of the individual who started the whole question of suffrage for her sex. ._‘,.4:- 94. \\‘ ELIZ.&ETH cm STANTQN y Earl Bars iﬁ Jehnstcwn , Y 3 Over one hundred years age, a little girl was born whese meme Wee destined to be keen by the gee ideas ehe set adrift. JAIﬁie ehild was Elizabeth Cedyg TShe first saw the light ef day November 12,Li§15, en the hills of Johnsﬁewng Fulton Cagney, ﬂew York. Her iether, Daniel Cady, was e renowned jurist; he set on the bench of the Supreme Court %and Court of Appeals, of New York State, till he was ever eighty years of age, A.life~eized portrait of him hangs in the Capitol at Albany. Her metherﬁ Margaret Livingston,'Wes a tell, handsome eomanﬁ a daughter ef Gel. James Livingsten, who served on General Weshingten‘s eteff during ﬁhe Revolutionary Ear. Ere. Cady was a daring horse~woman9 she was full of "vim? and “go”, so that Elizabeth inherited beauty, breine ana fight freezbeth eidee of her family. % She eas breught up in the midst of ease ané luxury; ené this makes it the mere remarkable that, even in her youth, she sheule have felt so keenly the injustice of the laws bearing on eemen. ’«3®t'.i=Is&’$-ﬂ95G$¢SG$€&E§Qﬁ$$'$ ¢ 1 I 5 3 G 9 :3 3 Picture 1 3 5 <° 5 3 of : 3 e 3 *3’ » . ° §‘:’§Z‘S 3 Cadgf 3 5.» m ‘ , 5’ w ,,_3:”, .» . , g :4: k 3 Q 4; -_., etcedoeaocca-sweetie-necoetﬂ Childhood I erwaye like te knew haw the people lack that I am.reediﬂg abﬁutv There were no photographs taken in those far-off days so I was glad to come upon this pen picture of my mother: “Elizabeth Cady was a plump little girl with very fair skin, rosy cheeks, good features, dark brown curly hair, laughing blue eyes, and beautiful tooth“. Those merry blue eyes were one of her marked features through life. An event that made a deep impression upon her, as a child, was the birth of a sister. Before she saw the now arrival, she heard several people say, “What a pity that the baby is another girl!" There were already four girls in the family, so when tho nurse took her in to see the little stranger, Elizabeth felt a kind of compassion for the baby. She remarked, in later life, "I didn't understand then that girls were considered an inferior order of beings." In those days there were no law schools in the United States. To the most noted lawyer in any region, the young man went who desired to study law. Judge Cady’s law offices, which adjoined his house, were famous all over the land and students came from the four points of the compass to be under his tutelage. Elizabeth’s Interest in the Law. my mother, from her earliest years, was constantly in her father’s offices, deeply interested in all that was going on there particularly in hearing the students talk about the laws they were studying. There was nothing those boys enjoyed more than roading aloud to Elizabeth all the bad laws they came upon relating to women. They found much more interesting to see her fly into a rage than to pore over musty law books. They always had a new batch ready whenever she appeared. Johnstown was in the midst of a large farming district, and Elizabeth often sat on hot father’s knee as he talked to his clients, especially if they were the wives of farmers who came to tell the tender-hearted judge of how unjustly they were being treated by their husbands. The cases often concerned the farm, on which many of the women had been born, and which frequently had been left them by their fathers before they were married. In 1823, no married woman could own property, If, as a girl, she had inherited a piece of land, the moment she married John Jones it passed into his hands. Everything she possessed his; her clothes, her false teeth even! If he took them away, she couldn't masticate her food! And she had no redress. The money she earned ever the wash~tub was likewise his, and he could collect it at the end of the day from the people for whom she worked! Worse still, he didn’t have to give her any of it. And this right of a husband to collect hie wife‘e wages was the law in California till 1910; when the women won the vote in that state. The Judge was explaining all these laws to old Sarah, whose ne‘er-do-well husband had mortgaged the beautiful farm which she had inherited from her father when she was a girl, till there was very little left. Sarah always supplied the Judge's family with eggs; butter, chickens, cider, and other good things, so that little Elizabeth looked upon her as a kind of lady bountiful, when she appeared at the week~ends. My grandfather got down many books and read the laws to Sarah to show her why he could not help her; however, petting her on the back, he told her he would put her on one of the best farms he owned, stock it for her, and she could have all she made from it, and could stay there as long as she lived. But it was justice not charity that the old woman wanted. Elizabeth had not been idle during this interview; When her father finished with a book, she quietly marked each law that he had read, turned down the leaf, and put the books back on the shelves upside down, so that she would know them. She followed the weeping woman into the street and when out of sight of the office she threw her arms about her, bade her cry no more, and told her that she had marked every one of those wicked laws, and that when the men had left the offices that evening she was going back and would cut them all out of the books. "Then", she said, "your troubles will be over!" As soon as Sarah could get rid of the child, she hurried back to Judge Cady and told him what his little intended doing. So, after supper, he took Elizabeth over to his office, and there, with the child seated on his knee, before the crackling logs of a big fireplace he told my mother how laws were made by the legislators at Albany, that his library was only one of many all over the state, that even if it burned up it would make no difference, that when people wanted to get the laws changed they had to go to Albany, talk to the legislators, and get them to alter the laws, then new books would be printed and the old ones laid aside. Little did that conservative judge dream that what no woman had ever done would, in years to come, be done by that very daughter of his. He unconsciously planted the seeds of rebellion in that fertile brain; and when grown to womanhood, the mother of four sons and a daughter, she took two nurses and two babies with her, and, leaving them at the Delevan house, went up to the Capitol building and made her first speech before a legislature on tﬁa unjust laws pertaining to married women. That was in 1854. 3i=39!?!&$a!Q5§9$'DiD9Q3@'8§§I§i§ -------------------------- : Picture : : of : : Judge Cady : -------------------------- Loss of her only Brother During my mother's childhood Judge and Mrs. Cady lost their only son, a fine, manly fellow, who had just graduated, with high honors, from Union College, JUDGE DANIEL CADY. Schenectady, N. Y. It nearly broke my grandfather's heart. He was always saying to Elizabeth, when she tried to console him, "Oh, my daughter, if you had only been a boy!“ Throwing her arms about him, she said “I will try to be all my brother was." She resolved to study hard and stand at the head of her class, to learn Greek, Latin, the higher mathematics, and to ride horseback--all of which resolves she carried out. Rev. Simon Hosack. Judge Cady‘s next door neighbor was an old Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. Simon Hosack. Elizabeth was a great pet of his. Whenever she was in trouble she ran at once to consult him, she was eleven years old at this time. One morning, as he was working in his garden before breakfast, She came running over to ask him which he liked the better, girls or boys. "Why, girls of course," he replied, “I wouldn't give you for all the boys in Christendom." “My father doesn't feel that way," said the child, "he prefers boys, he wishes I had been one, and I intend to be as nearly like one as I possibly can. I am going to learn to ride horseback and swim, and I want to study Latin and Greek. Will you give me a Greek lesson now, Doctor? I want to begin at once”. “Yes, dear child," he said throwing dawn his hoe, come into my library and we will start without delay." He entered fully into the feeling of suffering that possessed the little girl, and putting into her hands the old grammar he had used in the University of Glasgow, Scotland, he taught her the Greek article before breakfast. Elizabeth Cady was educated in the old Academy in Johnstown. The girls and boys were all in the same classes, except in the languages and higher mathematics. In these subjects my mother was the only girl among a number of boys, mast of them older than she, who were preparing for college. She was always running races with John Wells to see who should stand at the head of the class. Some- timas it’W&$ Jﬁhﬂg aamﬁéimaﬁ @lﬁZa%@€h$ She carrieé cff any cf tha prizes, buﬁ, when flushed with iriumphg she ran té her father’s affice and laid thasa traasn uras im his 1ap§ and 1o§kad up inta his face for a word of praise; his mag ram spansa was; “Chi if you had only'been a bag.” Thus it was bcrne in uyan har, at an early age; that boys saemad ta ﬁe mars hivhly valuad than girls. The iran sank deep inio her Saul and aha ﬁeterminsd is see what she c@u1d do to lif% ﬁha terrible edium aﬁtached ta al1‘W@mankinﬁ¢ “Eighty years and I quate the follawing from.my mothergs autabiagraphyg Msre“:!"FroH;the Jchnstown ﬁcadamy many of tha bays 0f my glass wsnﬁ ta Enian H Collegeﬁ S$h@ﬂ@§ﬁ&ﬂy¢ ‘When those‘with‘whom.I had studied and aonﬁaﬁdad far ‘prizes for aver fiva years saws ta bid me goodubya, and I learned 0f the barrier that prevented my follwwing in their footstegs, ‘No girls amiﬁted here?, my vexation and marﬁification knew mg bounds. I remsm$er nsw how'prauﬁ amd%hamdsoma the boys lacked in their naw clothes as they jumpad an the staga~caach and drsve off, and haw lonaly I felt after they were gone, and I had aathing ta do, for the plans far my future were not yet determined. I felt mnrg kaenlf than aver ﬁhe humiliatian of the distinciion made on the grounds cf sex." There was not a oﬁilege for girls in the'world at that time;~1830. (Oberlin Collegeﬁ in Ohie, was nut o§ened till 1833.) The Emma‘Wi11ard Schecl. In family ceumcil it was decided to send Elizabeth is tha Emma ﬁillard ,Sehoa1 aﬁ Tray, N. Y.; the mast calebraiad educaﬁional instiﬁutian far girls to study but French, music and dancing. in ﬁha United States at that data¢ Alasi when Elizabeth reaahadfﬁwxéfﬂshe I’-£3 fauna that her sﬁudias in the excallant Jehnstcwn Acad@m§"had carried her far bavand the mast aﬁvanaeﬁ glasses in.her new schgcl. There as ngthimg fer her . t, . 2.3 W- ,,_. kylk“ She was so disgusted when she learned this and thought of her boy chums at Union College, only a few miles away, going on into the higher realms of study; that she burst into tears at the injustice of it all. But being a good deal of a philosopher, she pitched into French and music with all her might, and wrote home to her father for the extra money needed for the dancing lessons. The judge promptly wrote back that he was perfectly willing to pay out any amount of money to educate her head, but would give nothing to educate her heels! He was toe mush of a Puritan to believe in dancing. Elizabeth Cady, even as a girl, rarely let any men get the better of her in an argument. She sent off an epistle post-haste, “Thank you, dear father, but your letter shows great ignorance, dancing is done on the toes not on the heels! So please send me the money by return mail." And he did, for Daniel Cady was too just a judge not to know When he was worsted in a case! Educating a Young Man for the Ministry. In these early days girls and women were always doing things to educate young men for something that these sons of Adam were not able to accomplish by their own efforts. My mother was the leader of a club of girls in their church which had undertaken to raise funds to educate a young man for the ministry. They sewed, baked, brewed tea and coffee, held fairs and sociables to pay his way through the Auburn Theological Seminary. When he was ready to graduate, they sent him money to buy a new suit of black broadcloth, a high hat, and a cane. Then they invited him to come and preach them a serman in the presbyterian Church, the largest in the town. Everyone turned out to hear him. The front pews were reserved for the girls. When the church was full and the psychological moment had arrived, the club marched in, head by my mother, and took their seats, all dressed in spring attire, each girl on the tiptoe of expectation to hear what their youthful theolagua wnuld say. I shall never forget hearing my mother describe that scene ta an audi~ enea in Chiaagag when she was on one of her lecturing trips. After dilating on haw faithfully that club of girls had worked to aducaie liha young man, in her round, rich voiae, she askaﬁ that vast assembly; “Ana what do ycu think, my friends: he took for his text? That passage of the Scriptures which says, Pausing a momsnﬁ ts let her hearers catch the full significance of ihe ﬁhingg ﬁrs. Stanton remarked in a slow} distincﬁ tone, “we never aducatadanQih~ eri” Hef hearers bursi agﬁ into shcuts of laughter and ayplausaa Some man called ou%5 "I should hope net." when quigg was restored, mother‘went on to relate haw those girls turned and looked at cue ancther for just a momsnt, than all arose, and with heads l ‘they erect, drawing themselves ug to their full height, two by twg/marched dawn that lang aisle and out into the streei. They never stcpped ta hear ona ward ha said. And the huga Chicagc audience, 50 years after the incidenﬁ, shonisd they selves hearse calling, "Bravo! bravoil for those girls, and thraa eheers for Elizabeﬁh Cady' Stantoni" Girlhood. my grandfather had a large stable full of good driving and saddle horses, carriages and slaighs of all descriptiens. He didn’t allow his ﬁaughters to gs anywhere with young E@n.n1ess he prsvided the horses far horsebask riﬂing, ar the vehicles for driving, nor ceuld they go to public anﬁertainmgats unless he provided the tickets. This being'well understeod the Cady gir1s'wera graaé , . many favcrltes, and as grandmmther kept open house, and there wara%alway§[nice yaupg. man studying law in her husband’s offices, they never lacksd for asserts. A.most amusing incident occurred in connectian with a certain yaung man fror* T ’ 0 .* - ~ ﬁ - u . \ u‘Ln1on aullega, wna was spending hlS Chrlsﬁmaﬁ vaoatlgn at the Cady manﬁicn. 10 It was oviéont that he was quito smitton with y mothor; he had boon toooing her for being gush o chattorbox, and said he didn’t boliovo she could keep still too minutoo, she emphatically vowing she oould'olohout diffioulﬂy.% lhoro was o party of these gouﬁg §eOple gothorod about tho piano singing, lough~ ing and talking by turns. It was a glorious moonlight night anﬁ fins sloighingg so or. Blank oroposoo to my mother thotthoy go for a ride, and ooo if sho really ooulo koop still.l She sent oorﬂ to Peter to héoo a sloigh harnessed, and she left the room.togot ready. Her sister ﬁoogo went with hor,ﬁ:§E[$hor£1y appeared in the drowingoroom and told ﬁr. Blank heﬂﬂfbettor got on his coat, as the sleigh: was at tho door and his lady already io. So the young man rushoé out iﬁgw the hall, donned his fur coat, cap and gloves ond popped in booido his companion, ﬁll the young folks troopod out on the piazza to see them otort. The ooaohmon handed him.tho lines and finiohed tucking in tho robes; »’Eid shouts from.tho porch and answering ones from.the sleigh they dashed off, the bolls ringing mor- rily as they disappoorod in the moonlight. 0 "Iso‘t this o glorious night for o sloigh~rido, Eiss Elizabothﬁﬁ romorkod or. B. ﬁe ?oply. ﬁftor making several more attempts and getting Mo"ansWors hel “Uh; oomo now, thoro’ooo’t be any fun riding if you aro not going to talks I didn‘t really moan What I said, I knoo you oon koop still if you oono to, I was only fooling.“ Still his companion modo no roply.l The horse was guito a gag ono/(Juogo Ca&§ liked good horse flesh; his - 7 an I ‘i. __. * Wife and all hio¢ lﬁwooulo ride and drivo'anything)3 and kept tho young man busy trying to control it. But after a whilo he said, “ooll, if you are not going to talk we might as ooll drive home,“ Still the young lady made no answor, so after a little he turned the horse and drove boob lf iiss Cody kept oil hor lovers at onm‘s length, they never droamod of touching her, house o y or. olonk had not loiﬁ his hand on hor arm.ond bogged her 11 to ﬁargive him and speak; when he drové up in frcné cf the hangs all its inhabitants game out on tha giazza, inquiring how he had enjoyed his ridgﬁ anﬁ fcremgst among_ them was my moﬁher, Elizabeth Cayi As acon as Era Blaﬁk saw'har he gasped and turning to the lady besiﬁe him, he axclaimad, “Far haavenis sake; Wiﬁh whom.have I been ridiﬁg: Julia Jones?” a gﬁ%%» girl Wham ha thaﬁaughly daw- ﬁastad. ’ “Bring in the yeung lady; Peter; and shaw Mr. Blank wha it is,“ 1aughn inglycallad Gui Elizabath Sady. It was a feather bolster dressad up in ha? alathesi Ehe yang man wa$ SQ maé,, SQ digusted ﬁhai he mever fully §ogave my moﬁhér the joke she ylayaﬁ on him. E3 soon transfarrad his devetiens to soﬁemoae alas, WhQm.1atar he married. The news spread as far ﬁawn the Mohawk Vallay as Sghanactady and when he gﬁt back he collega, the ﬁoys would say5 “So yam Wenﬁ sleighing with a bolster up in Johnsﬁown, Slamk, dié yea enjoy your ri&e?“ ﬂy Kwﬁher, I have been ﬁeld, was a very beautiful yvung wnmaag Ska wag brilliani in cenveraatien, sang and played wall on the pianc and guiiar, was a graceful danger, one whose society was aiways scughts aha had me and 9f admirw ers,'was a fearless hcrsewwow 1, coulé laap any fence or,jum@ any éitch. Euﬁj she had 3 sericus side to her naﬁuras she was an omniveréus reaé E, af staaéaré Eeaks, ever éelving into social questiéns and trying ta solve knotty prmblemsa Sh8‘W&S particularly fond ofarguing with learnadzmen. In diacuasion she aiways kept her temper, was quick to parceive and.to take aﬁvanﬁage sf 3 1@0p*hQ183 or a flaw in an Qppcnent’s argumant, and she was blessed Wiﬁh a kean sensa of humara 311 my grs¢&mother*s daughters were well trained in hausa§§}é ﬂuties, and; natwithstanding there were many'sarvan%s in the house§ aash§¢¢h%Ww%r“Was obliged Q V~..._ to spend a certain lengﬁh of time every day attending ta her special task. 12 Gorrit Smith . Elizabeth Cady was brought up in tho midst of the most oonoorvativo; sooﬁarian surroundings; How she became so liberal, along so many lines, has always been an interesting study to mo; one of iho poiont influences in the life of this wideuawako young Womn was her oogstant visiting at the home of her cousing Gorrit Smith, the aboliw tionist, at Potefboro, New York. His daughter Elizabeth anﬂ my mother formed a strong friendship that lastoé all thoir 1iVBSa Grandfothor did not altogether approve of these visits; ”5udgo Cody ad» mired his brilliant nophoo'and appreciated his sterling oharaoiorg but ovary fibre of his being rovoltod against the aovanood opinions of Gorrit Smith. However, the two families were so knitted togothor by relationship and sinooro friendship ﬁhat a rupturowas absolutely impossible, so Elizabeth Cady osoapod oonstantly from the religious austerity of her homo into the swootor3 froor at» mospher of the ?etorboro household," wvitoo my sister, Harriot Stanton Blatoh. “Tho Potooboro house was spacious, and always full of choice society", Writes my mother; "hero you met scholars, philosophers, philanthoopigts, judges; bis~ hops, artists, musicians, and statomon. \ ........ There novor'wao such an atmosphoﬁoof peace, freedom ano good cheer, nor were there over two such hosts as Cousin Nancy and Cousin Gorrit.” There were tins when anﬁi-slavery was tho all~absorbing EOpi3a Through the portals of the home at Poterboro stopped Wendell Phillips; ﬁilliam Lloyﬂ Garm rison, Horace Greeley, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown} As it was one of the stations on the “Under Ground Railway", the outnbuildings often harbored runaway slaves, resting for a day or so till Mr. Smith was able to convey thomby oar- riago, or sleigh, safely to Canaéa, Where, the moment they stopped foot on English soil, freodom.awaitod thom. My mother saw and oonvorsed with those runaway slaves and heard from.thoir own lips the tales of their tortures; Thus it was that she early became interested in the sad lot of that much abused race; Every possible phase of political and social life come up for discussion at Peterfboro, and as those who did thetalking,were the leaers of thought of that day you can readily judge of the influence all this had on the open mind of my mother. . . , , Henry Brewster Stanton It was at Peten¥boro that Elizabeth Cady first met Henry Brewster Stentonﬁ _ re a direct descendant of Elder’ﬁi1liam,BreWster, who came over in the Mayflower, Mr. Stanton‘wae then considered the most eloquent aod impassioned orator on the anti-slavery pletforme eHe was a finemlooking man, ten years ow mother‘e senior» Elizabeth Cady had a passion for oratory, who unuotal powers and earnest» mess of Mr. Stanton soon made a deep impression upon her. Carriegewloads of ladies and gentlemen drove off every morning to dttend the anti~s1avery meetings that were being hold all over Eadison Gounty. The enthuoiesm.of the people in these great gatherings, the thrilling oratory, were experiences never to be forgotten. My mother says in her autobiography,- "I became deeply interested in anti~s1avory and temperance questions; saeeoeseee I felt a new inspiration in life, and was enthused with new ideas of individual rights; for the anti-slavery platform was the best sooool the American poopie ever had in which tolemmoteepublioan prinoioles of government." Her‘ﬁedding Journqyg I The result of that meeting in Peterboro in Ootoben,1839,'Wao a wedding in Johnotown, N. Ye; im.May, 1840. Judge and ﬁrs. Cody oppoeed.th9tmarriagé Ld of their :w@5%ﬁ{“ fdaughter to "a radical“; but the young P90P19 were Obduratga 14 and a'wedding trip follcwed ts tha'§br1d’s Antiwslavery Convention heﬁd in Lcnden, England; in June, 1840; My father was Secretary ef the Convantion; as well as one of ths delagates fr¢m;£he United States‘ E333 Amsriéan*wmmen had also been sent as delegates, but on account of English prajudisasg based on asriptural texts; thay-were net permitteﬁ to take ﬁhair seats an tha flocrg so had ta sit in the galleries and look on ignomigfuslyi There were many ringing appeals made in that greai hall $0 seat tha Woman 1 delegatas from.th@ United States; My father; I aﬂzprcué £0 say, made an impassionm ’ ed speech in their favor, William Lloyd Garrison %i11iamKL10yd Garrison, the knowledge of Whose eloquence was wcrldwwideg and whQm.a11 England had be@n.anxieus to hear; was so indignant at the insult to his counirywemen that he refused to take his saai an the flaer, and sat silent in tirza §~‘§a.1.1ef3? ‘z»*«z'i‘t;h. the ”¥HC}31'L*?31T'1a ~ /7/5‘/7 ‘‘‘’7/(/’'‘‘ , M/%% Z“‘“;,‘Z f 3&4 7 / &/Z:-L/-:1 /9/éjisaniel O‘Conne11 Daniel O‘C0nnel1$ the great Irish oratcrg made his first agpearanca aﬁ the world‘s Coneniioné a few days after the women delegates had beeﬁ rejected. He paid a beautiful tribuﬁa to wamam and saiﬂ ﬁhat if he had been presanﬁ an the opening day he wmulé have spaken in her f&VQfa‘ Gssaecuaoosaatasoaesma we can) i‘ I 1: 5 o st :1 2 t 85 m ‘Piciure af 99 Lucreﬁia Mﬁﬁt : «: 9G!'DlQ'U!*ItﬁCQI!I<IOOC~1ﬂ!Q*3 - 4. \ ' '~,'i.’.f~‘: V H ‘\ ﬂ’ ' . ,g,;l,§»s."'” 15 Lueretieemeei These scenes all made e etreng impression on ehe heppy young brideg Eliz- abeth Ceey Stanton; One ether experience meée this cenventicnmemereble ﬁe my meeher. Threughouﬁ its sessions ehe set in the gallery next to Leeretie mﬁﬁt§ the distinguished Quaker yreeeher free ?hiledelphie; she end Ere“ eeee became well eequehted. eﬁother afterward ereee oﬁ her: “She was is me an entirely nee revelem tiem.of Wﬁmﬁﬂhﬁgdascseseasacstcal shell never cease te be grateful fer ﬁhe pet» ieeee eed seeming pleeeure with ehieh she fed my huegering Sﬁﬂlasssseeeseseseaea Eben I first heerd frem.her lips that I had the eeme right he ehine fer myself that Luther} ﬁelvie end Jeen Knox bed; end the eeme right he be guideda by my Gen eenvietione; I felt e eeewbern sense of dignity ewe freedeen“ These ewe ﬂiew cussed the grebleme of life fer the eomen cf thee egg, and decided} en their re~ tureﬂee emerieeg he eell e eonventien with the ebjeet “ef deeiing eéequetely eith the rights cf eomen". This meeting did et take piece, heeeverg till 1848» ey perente trevelled all overﬁngleedg Ire1end5*Sce£1end end§ be eeme ex~ teeiﬁ Freeeeg and feihee spake in all the large citiee ef the British :S1$5e On returning is her native lend; meeher,eee eekeeeeeet ehe had seen eeeeee that ieierested her meet. Her promgt reply eee, “Lucretia eeeeiﬁ While in ﬁublinﬁ Irelend, they were eeeerteineé by Daniel G‘Gonne11§ eke "Qreet $ieeriee“3 as he wee eelled. During dinner, Ere, Steeiee eeked him.if he heped ﬁe geie liberty for Ireland; “Ne”, he eeid; “but ii ie elweye geed eeliey ﬁe claim the ettermoetg and when yen will get eemethingﬁe caashesocosoaocnesavaaseoaoessn Q ‘ '3 Q 55 Q Q ,. > at A //"’""“"‘-. 5 _,;~'' .3 9; an U ‘,~~/ I W ﬁqgﬁurexcf 3 Q, . V 3 ‘1 ‘V ‘_', I... »-~‘“="_’“"' _ Q s . Eeeeegﬁezlree treln ; 1 [4, V ~..,\\‘ Q \( /1;?" ‘ ‘_ §§¥“»-3,_: C If,/"' 5 3‘ G 1* § a ﬁggggibiﬁiiﬁiftﬁﬁ~§9§O&$O!O$Q89‘ Hbmaward Bcunﬁ §hen.mothar wenﬁ in Troy to school she rode on the firsi railreaé built in ﬁhe United Statesg which rau between Schaneciady ané Albany. My parenﬁs WBm$ ﬁg Europe an a sailing vessslg But they camﬁ hemg an ﬁha first steamﬁr ﬁhat ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the iggfius” of the Cunard Lineg All threugh her evantful life she di& things ﬁhat ware beiﬁg dame for the first timai On their returnimr. and ﬁrs. Stanton wenﬁ to Jahns%awn$'where thgy ran maimed under ﬁhe parantal reaf fof twp yearsa Faihar studied law in Granéfather§s effice. Esther busiad herself reading law, historyg ad galitieal agansmyg but in 1842 all her thoughts were turned to the ﬁractical one; mf'hat ts ﬁe iﬁﬁ a baby. Sha says; “Though mwtherhsad is the mst important of all tha professions; requiring mre knawledga than any oﬁher departmsnt of human affairs, there is not sufficient attention given to the preparation for this high office.” In September, 1842, she gave birth to a fiﬂe boy, Whm was nameﬁ afiar his graméfathar5 Daniel Caiy 3tant@n. The scientifia manna? iﬂ'Whi$h she raised thaﬁ baby'wsu1d have ﬂame creﬂiﬁ he gif twentieth century mairani She said she had been ﬁhimking$ raading and absarving, ‘ad had as liitla faith in iha pgyular tﬁaarw ies sf tﬁﬁﬁé days as regarés babies as she baa an m&ﬁy othar subjgaﬁsy 03% ry sf ligﬁt illuminated the darkness about her, “It was a hawk by gndraw Qcmbafgn la” 3‘? famayg sha“Wriiaa, She Proved Ber Th0?i%S g ﬁaulﬂ that I had tims and spasa to tell in daiail haw she ﬁraimed her hursag her husbamdg her parenﬁgg evén the d0ct9r§ as $3 haw ha? baby was ta ha iﬁaatadg when mast of them.ha& been tha parents Qf num@?aus ahildramg Sui aha carried the day; and har‘h@a1thy3 bauﬁcing baby convinced tham.£ha$ her thcrigs mmat be right, as he never ariad, slept a gﬁad Shara of the tima, and; baing givw ” an planﬁy af fresh air amd‘water to drink, being wmrsed reguzarky by tha_o1cek3 17 -’ gégi,/é;44Lqnm%%¢2e~ua.Zé%vu¢¢A4ij:Z;;4»» M__ . ¢ M A.‘ a-.« V ‘N 1- wt; aw ’ -3‘ «-1 ‘ _‘}={»‘‘ '-._.'’7 .'.._g‘ "'3: *3 _, 1 _ h@4 wag never 111* E9 ﬁl§§t &1mn@ mg a raam by ﬁ1maa;$:‘ Egbuﬁf sa$u all ac? .% ;% , 8 ,, - _ ¢= mm ..,V;g . ~= *; 2 ~ : , ﬁn I * . ~ $ -+ [ w “’w §ead&n& ﬁi hhls blﬂm G6ﬂmﬁT$d an pay$1a¢0g§; dgat and nyglaneﬁ anﬁ aha“ she cam t tha Qonalusian that babies ; s}% vied uwless somgthing wag ﬁha mattﬁr thaﬁ "7 *3 gauld be remediaﬁ§ Eémaa sha wa child cry withaut faaling haunﬁ ta flﬁﬂ J. R-4 » at “e‘-"* 2 c ‘i , .9» " 1* sub whaﬂ ma; baa cauaﬁg I %e? in life she lecﬁurad far aight mmnéhs af avary‘y@a?3 far twalva X‘ 25* Q'"‘§"‘ "'5"? 5 ’~ —‘ us": ‘ ‘“‘ *"“:§Vé.' .‘ ’ 1" ’ ﬁ ‘ 3‘ -9 . 4, " 1' ‘-3 ygayg§ frgm,m&1m$ as Ca1ifgrnma3 fr$m.k;aaasa%a ta Texas; On thasa axtgnazvg traps h 1Fﬁ A‘ ” av 'ﬁ”“ W%%‘ rv‘n “whims aﬁd i@na?a@t n9%@ﬂ%q Qwd %“?%%v “ai Siaa ‘x.1.£a33E§Z‘1.i:‘J§.1.“J‘e3S E5; 41.. us’-.1 Q {I 1 :3 /L .*...z‘ 5 .-..:. V ‘3 . "' ~ *‘ * «N» J‘ - «-’$« 5 ‘—»~“¥>»3~ «a- G‘? and» *5 in $9 savan sauﬂd shildraﬂ sf her awn she felt she aauld sp@ak‘vi%h authmriiya An Imgragsiva ﬂbjacﬁ Lassen . .... Jae ._ Gm ana aocasian, a'wh01a car full of peo§1s'was pn tenﬁerhmeks fram thg graisngad 3?yiﬂg_Q§ a b&%y, As maths? enﬁarad éha car anﬁ task he? seaﬁg sha hearﬁ its pit@0us'Wai1s, SQ she want fcrward and askea the‘waary5 ysumg mgthar if sha might taka ii; The b&%y raadi1y"wanﬁ ta % marg and wa1king‘With ii ta ihe anﬁ sf tha car she tagk har ymakat drinkiag qlass from.iﬁ3 saga; ringimg 1%, gig ﬁraiaﬁi ii af avery ﬁyay. Sas”ag him 35 ihirsiyg mgthar gag the liﬁiia fgi aw ‘Y s samﬁ mﬁrﬂﬁ iheng smiling mg7%§ he? face, Ea laiﬁ hia ¢@ad 0n.her b?§a$%«an&‘wamt poi’ "‘f” . Q‘ ~ . .7,-4 -“=;"‘:' > 1"‘ "‘,“‘,‘~. g ’s,. pt. -3- ~u-« -v ' .. . faaw as;ae§ lmﬁuﬂﬁuﬁy; ﬂfu§T aghzls gha saturnmd is whara the babylg maramis waragm is th@ chiig gﬁill sleyt an paaaafuilya I!” 3“ 3? , . - .,.,.- '? _, ., ‘H! . ‘~‘~. ,. ‘ ,— A Yam S%a3.mada&ﬁ‘; said %ﬂh%ﬂ?§ all ia@ Erb§‘ﬁ§3d§ﬂ‘W%3 a drink @§‘waie:&“ Y?‘-:'~:1:“ 15 age ~ 1 ‘ “Y _' F .,,‘x, 6. V, g , . , V . at 5. g 3 awﬁggw axclazmad tha woman} why, ha 3 nava? had a drink mf Waiar mm hlﬁ lifai“ it A _ '_ _ W. r V N H .. .w._ h N w_ V, , , Euﬂgi you glVﬁ3ﬁMn¢§h§§l@ﬁ and Eibtmﬁg waﬁar?“ Mmﬁhar znqmgraﬂs fir”. 1 ’ «,3 . ‘E « ;-,~-. #9 r,«;‘ -r 9». Uﬁﬁ gas; cgitaxﬁg, was 0&3 «nswar. “Haw aid ia geurboy?" mcthar askad. 18 "One year last Tuesday". Wﬁhat have yam been giving him to drink when he was thirsty?" ﬂnﬁ t0 he? hG?FGF she received this &ﬂSWG?a "Tea? coffee er milk, and when he crias very har&, we put a few drops cf whiskeygor soothing syrup; in the mil&;§ So methar sat down opposite thése ignorant young paremts and gave them a simple talk em hygiene, disk, dress, digestion, physiolegy, ha impertance above all things of giving children glenty of water ta ﬁring. ézﬂkzihig tims ﬁhg baby lay on.m@ther’s lap sweetly sleeping; she had thrgwn a light shawl over the chilé. Tha §e0ple in the car gathereﬁ araund, samﬁ standing am the seats ta listen. Hang of the man asked questicns, ta carry heme the informaticn to their wives, as they said, they also, haé babies that criaﬁ incessanély. The years after the birih of hér 1fir3t son.Were very full aﬁﬁ busy ones. In lﬁéﬁ my parenﬁs mpved to Boston, Mass., where my father began.thapractiee cf lawg as a parimer of Ruus Chcate. There mother mat Lydia.ﬁaria{Chi1é, Elizabeth Peab¢dy3 Thaodare Parker, Ralph Ealdo Emerson, Charles Sumner; Jehn G."Whittier, Bronsen &lcoit§ ﬁathaniel Hawihorne, and many ether litarary pegple and reformerag She ané father were frequent viaitmfs at the h0mﬂs0f §ande1l Phillips and ﬁilliaz Lleyﬁ Garrisana ﬂhila in BOStGmﬁ mother attended all the lecﬁures, churehas, cencertsg theatrés, temperanceﬁ paace, prisan~ref¢rm.and antinslavery oonvantions that mgt in the city; She says:"I never lived in such an enthusiastiaally litarary and ram fmﬁm latiiuﬂa befare. my mantal powers wera kept at the highast tansimn." Th0se'wMre stirring times in which my paranis lived, BostQm‘Wag the stgym cenire of many of the big movements of that day» The great antiagggvgr mgatingg 19 in Fanuail Hall rmakad Basion to its very founﬁatisn. They were cften dis» turbed by huge mgbs that woulﬂ held the most gifted orator at bay hmur after hear. These an the §latform‘were pelted with rattan eggs: cabbagasg and even brickbatsi During this parioé of her life in Bosﬁon my mother alga visited Brook Farm, gpandigg Emu d&ys thera, and saw that cammunity ﬁxyarimant at its heigﬁll " -_ ‘:9 ~,,.», «7 - A ’ 3 _.‘ .v.s“_z,"-9, , .« Yark Sun§‘Waited an ﬁablg. Thus through her earlv vears’was the bent of this breaﬁminded thmuvhtn 2.3 u 21 3 «.3 ful yaung wnman made firm; the foﬁndation stones were Wall laid amang “*l native hills, and nsw she began ﬁg build tha supafsﬁruature thereon. ﬁrs. Stanton as a Housekeeper- *?‘f"" my grandfather had given maihar a fine, naw heuse, baautifully farm nimhed, on the hills of Shelsea, overlooking Beaten Harbaur. She says; "ﬁhen firsi installed as mistress avg? an gstablishmant, one has the ﬁama faaling of pride and satisfaction thai a young ministar must have in ﬂaking charge ‘-3 5 *.-”:§1I’§3. {:9 w £3 cf ﬁis first eaugregationg s.... It is a praud mmmant in a woman’$ life i suprams wﬁthin four walls. ..... I gtuﬁiad my everything yextaining ta hou$a~ kaapingl ..... I had all ihe mast ap§roved cook~book5, aud spent much sf my , lg . '= M V . ‘l " ' ‘:7 ,M«(. timg picklingfand exyeriménting on.n9w‘&ishes. I felt the same ambiiion ta _% axeell in all ﬁepartments sf ﬁhe culinary art that I did at schcal la iﬁa ﬁifferent .ranehes cf laa?ming. seats I put my whole Saul imts everything and enjoyad it.“ my mnther was a famous housakeeper and cook; though she always kept several household employaes, thera'was nothing she herself could not dc. Her house was always in ﬁerfecﬁ orﬂer frem garret to cellar, her back dear as —.u.vz‘-‘v=—’(¢’ 20 ha? front door. Eu 1845 Judge ani ﬁrs. Gady mmvad to ﬂlbany fer a faw years ta as~ tablish twn of their senswinwlaw in the legal yrsfassian ihare, S0 ﬁhﬁ J Qapiﬁal 9f the Stata gﬁﬁﬁmg the family rallying paint far same time. G@verncr‘¥illiam H, Seward « ﬁrs. ﬁﬁaniam made several visits ta £1bany during thig period, and ﬁhus‘was able ta take anzzative part imthe discuaaien cf t&a Earriad ﬁomangs Pramerty Bi11§ the V;-3 - mending in the Legislatures Ths bill haé bean introﬁugad in 183* it did mat pasﬁg hewaver; Wniil 1848. ﬁi1liam‘H. Sew&rd'was Govarnor - 3 9- _ ’ ’ ’ “ “’ ﬁgriﬂg §art gf this tima; he appravad of the bill; anﬁ hi; Wlfﬁﬁ a wvman of b o A 0 w‘ . if n» V E3 N‘; “ = , rt ‘*1 3 2“- rare lmtalllganae, advacatad 1t warmly. logawhar , ﬁrs. Stanton ﬂT;t$§§ “ﬁrs. Seward and I had the epgartunity of talking abeuﬁ tha bill with many membars3 bath cf the Senate and ﬁssembly, in S0ci@iy§ as wail as in smmittas raams.” Gmvarner amﬁ Mrs. Sewar&‘s friendship far my mather laatad t0 the and 9; uhair £335, and thay'were freguant visitars at aaah 0£har’a hamasg §il1ia3:£. Sewarﬂ was afﬁerward Secretary Sf Staﬁﬁ in ?ra$i&ent Lina01n‘s Gahinaﬁa %Mr3. Stan%on‘$ saemné son Henry was barn im Albany in 1843, during one cf hay visits taera, ﬁunéar mare favarabla auspices than w§'first ﬁarnﬁ she; writes, “as them I ts dc 1:zr:i.i:.E’; sza. bsa.z:y.*‘ imzi. }—mx¥ 33.§.z*d son, C;~erz*i*%; gm-2,33 3ﬁﬂHt0n,“W&S born im 1845 at Che1aea¢ H533. under the ahadaw cf Bunkér Eill mmnumanta Sha:musﬁ have been a very bay wammn wiih thmeé bays iﬁ Pan? years; she nursad all her b&hies3 and; though she always had nurses; ska did man .31‘ ._‘i things hewsalf for her children, She was a meat devotaé mmthar; she sang and plryad for us on bath yiano anﬁ guitar; anﬁ tald uswandarful stories. She 21 cculd racita poeﬁry by the page; often thesa recitations were fram tha Odes of Hsrace, 0? the Eclsguas of Virgil, she nevar forgeﬁ her Latin er Greek. I hava often seen her, at the twilight hour ih her ald age; surraunded by a bevy of children listeninv s§el1b0und't0 her thrilling tales. -; ”‘5?%l£* * il57” 51 ? Lif@ at Seneaa Fallso lflha sevaritv of the Naw‘England climaie provad toe rigcraus for my father’s ~ he&lth; sa this stimulating; intellectual and sccial lifal and his brilliant legal start, all had to he given up; and in the Spring of 1847 my parents mgved to Seneca Falls, ﬁew*?ark. Father’s haalth improved greatly; hey spant sixteen years of their married life in that littla village; and the?e their ' :¢..s;;\,l~—m . qﬁéﬁf four ohilﬂren'war9 born. t A 7 %§%w¢i¢ Grandfaﬁher had given mmther a large, ol§~£ashionadR§ame in Seneca Falls, also a farm near the town. On her way to the new home she stapped in“ Johns» town to visit her parents, and left her nurse and three boys there While she . want on.to Seneca Falls alone to put tha house in hahitablg condition. Father had been called to New'Y0rk ﬂity on important business. Ebther’s eldast sister, ﬁrs. Edward Bayard; had lived in ﬁhat villagé sevaral years before, and as ELih@F had oftéa Viaiteﬂ her, she was already acquainted‘With many of the tawnspeapleg I At parking Grandfather gave his daughﬁer & gooﬁly sized check and said with a kiss anﬂ a smile, “You believe in woman‘s capacity £0 dc and dare; 35W Q? ahead and_show us what you can do'With that hause.“ She started off quite hagpy at thafhcﬁght of the rasbansibility cf repairing a hause and puﬁtimg all things in arder. Tha ylaca had bean clmsad for several yearsﬁ and needed extensive repairs; anﬁ the grounds, compriaing several acres, were overgrawn with weeds, and the trees, hedges and shruba sadly neglected. %y'mpther writes in her autobiography: “tit %mi@ute survay of the _ ‘ ‘Y ‘,.3§ﬂij_,*,, - 3 praises anﬁ due consultatian with sevewal sons 0 '4 v‘: :'~*':'t~~ ’ ’ painters, paperwhangers, and garﬂeners to work; built a fine haw kitahana wpod~hause and several perches and in six'waaks took passassianiﬁ my mather possessed a great ﬁeal cf axacutive atility and astanishad every ate at wtat she aécomglished in S0 shart 3 time; She told me maay amusing taies of sitting on kegs cf nails and disw cussiag the tapics ef the day with samé of the leading Judgas and lawyers of the tswng who draypad in to adviae her, while the workman were pounding and hammering about themJ In Seneca ?a11s my mother found life decidedly sclitarg and even depressing. In Beaten all her immediate friends were thinkers and refarmars, amang tham.the chief figures of that ﬁay. There she had a new hcuse‘ith all tthe mmdern conveniences, well-trained sarvants, near and delightful neighbors. Eéra the home was remote, built at the edge of a cauntry village: The h0usa~ hold employees were inferior. ’She had an increasing number of children, anﬁ 1 fathar was frequantky abliged to be away frat hama on outiness. §hi1e‘we lived in Seneca Fallg he was a member cf the ﬂew York Legislature. Ebthar sums it all uy grayhically in the fol10wing‘wor&s; *Ta kaap a larga hause .and many acres of grauné in orderg purchase evaryzartinla fer daily use? Keep the wardrobea cf half a dozen human beings in proper trimﬁ take children ta dentiﬁts, shoemakers; day and dancing schools, and tc find teachers for home study,- altogether made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as Well as all the hands I couié press into service. .fhen, tca; the novelty 0f housekeeping had gasseﬂ away, and much that was ance attractive in dgmggﬁig life was now i?ksom.. I had so many cares that the oompant I neaaeé for in~ tellectual stimu1us‘as a trial rather than a pleasure.“ Before this, my mother's life had glided by¥with ccmparative ease, Aﬁith her hameepathie book and bag sf buﬁ new ﬁhe real struggle of existence was ugen her; Her &utias'wer9 two numerousg an&§ “None”, she sayss “sufficiently exhilaraﬁing £0 bring inte play my higher faculties; hamaa 1 auffereé from.m@nﬁm1 hunger. I naw fully underw steed the practiaal difficultias East wcmsn have to eanﬁand‘with in the isolated hemsehsld, ﬂﬁw i%e impossibilitr cf wamangs besi davelopment if in centact, the chief part of her life, with servanﬁs and children“, i§~£4§§ﬁi-¥’O§§94E°I5§4Q$$§O§%$'9G$Oﬂ‘NB " at “’ 1' 3 : C ’ 9 S 9 1., E 0' ‘ ‘ 9 " ~ 3 \E>"§x;> ‘met’ * z \\ u 5 “‘- 5 “ .‘ 9 : 1 A I is . - ..-=-. ~ - -:=.~.‘- new E aad ﬂmf Qgm Olu3Sb ~ 9 3 ‘ 3 Q t 7-‘ ‘re 1* . ' . ‘agﬁv ' 3' 0 S (‘I V * 3 3 5 $ Q I 8 ’ 2 1 I 3 OOG0i§§0®OO!it>Cl=5352?!-ﬁtﬁﬂifi$- Mrse Stanton and twe 3? her bavs ffsm an old dayuerrect G _ ta 3' x,.ZT' Near Our h0me'w&s an Irish setiiament frcxzwﬁish came constant commlaints E‘ "§' 1 . 5*’ «rm $ .~m— A ,, -..v ‘ .y, 4, ‘a F‘ ‘ I ‘ 5 ‘ I‘ . th&u krsﬁ §EdﬁtGn 3 bays were thlawzmg stauag mi their “pigs anﬁ reefs”; 38 successful was my mmﬁher in bar diplemaﬁic adjustnanﬁ of affairs, thaﬁ S18 S90? 1 0',‘ ‘‘t_ ' ‘. 1 - ‘ , N, 2 3‘ mecgms the umpire of the nexghborhood. bhe lent boogs anﬁ payers ta tﬁ@’WG§ﬂ ﬁﬁﬁ mﬂﬁi invited the chiléram inta her beautiful grcunds ta pl“y‘wiﬁh her hg;g ‘ "' ‘L "75" ' ‘”"’ W ‘ 1?‘ tn A ’ 1» u »- n. . » and angog uhﬁ Eﬂlugm, p&Pmll@1 mﬁd hC?l£Qﬁi&1 bags: the trageza aﬁd laﬁﬁergﬁ ymdicines, she tenﬁed thg sick and mgnistgrad is tha wmmen im the nangs of mate?nitv§ ti‘? she Qagﬁﬁw Qn%f§ an exmﬁri if thﬂi J. ~ E . as -. _ .e=‘m.:... -4» J‘- ,,,,., 1- ,~ ~ 1" 4 ‘L d“ C l XX’) #55- branch 9? the mgdical prafessien. She imugzé them.haw to take intelligent cara cf their babias and children. She was lookad ugan by all her naighbars as their beat friend anﬁ adviseﬁ, anﬁ thera'was noﬁhing they wou1& moi ﬁe for ha? in return. Emerson says a hsalthy discontent is the first step in progress; my mgther says, “The general discontent, which I now‘felt,with woman‘s partian aa wife; mother} hou$ekeeper3 sgiritual guide, the weariﬁﬁ, anxious look of tha majayity of wemen, all impressed mg with the feeling that some aotiva maaaureﬁ must %a ‘ﬁaken to ramedy the‘Wrongs of society in general and GE woman in particular, ﬁy experiamme at the'ﬁor1d’s £ﬁti~S1avery Gcnvantian in Lemdanj all I had ra&d of ihe lagal status of women in my faiher‘s law books, ané ﬁhe cpprassian af wnmgn I saw everywhere swept across yg*smul, intensifieﬂ nww by Hg'mﬁny personal exw‘ periencés. it seemgd as if all the eleménts had conspireﬂ to impel me te same ﬂﬂwayﬁ Sggg, 1 ggulﬁ net sge‘wh&t to de or where to begin, ~ my only thought was 3 public meating for protest and discussion.” In this perturbed sﬁate of mind, mother received an inviﬁatimn to yo my ta '%aterlo0, the naxt tawn, and spanﬁ he day at the home cf her friends, the Eunﬁs, ﬁe see Lucﬁetia ﬁatt, wha was there on a visii. Ehey haé invited a party of their z— Quaker acquaintances, all earnest, married women, ta meat 4! - ﬁrs. Matt and ﬁrs‘ Stamioa. §y?hé%her was so full of the spirit wf discmntent, and sﬁa poured it autwith such vahamenca anﬂ eloquanca, that she stirrea herself and all her hearers, as she says, “Te de and dare anythingi" like First ﬁcman’s Rights ﬁenventien 0 They deciéed to holé a ”%bman's Eights Convention”. They wrote the call ﬂ A that afterncon and had it printed in ihe Seneca Gsunév Courier an July 14, l8é8. if . , H‘ 5.. 9 Q rs ,, _* I - ‘,3 Q a w I K The c&11 was 1bgued‘w1th0ut slgnaﬁures, mt was merely an announcement that a r . f 9 ‘ . 5 ‘Hr » _ I ‘. , Jonah s Rzghts Conventlon would be held on July 19, and £0, lﬂ Seneca Falls. The chief mnvers were Elizabeth Cadv Stant on of Seneca Falls, Lucretia Matt of Philadelphia, %ary'enn ﬁcC1intock and Jane Hunt of Waterloo, and Martha C. T E dright of iuburn. The last mentioned ledy*eee the sister of ﬁrs. ﬂott, and the grandmother of Themes ﬁott Osborne, the famous exdwerden of Sing Sing Prison, who thus comes naturally by his reform proclivities. , .. The Convention was held in the~” Church in Seneca Falls. It ees a great success, the place ees crowded at every meeting, both men end women spoke. James Eott, Lucretia's handsome husband, presided. Someone sage of it: “A religious earnestness dignified all the proceedings”. M 4'c«¢,é"4..:;z/a 3 * ~ -in 'L.«.~.- ~ »~~vr~ —+‘:a’"’ " . “ ‘ - ‘ Of that first ConventionZme»eeeeee dig in her eutcbiogzephy, Eighty Years and More“, "These eere the hasty, initiative steps of the moet;momentoue refornz that hee yet been leunchede in this world, the first organized protest against the injustice which has brooded for ages over the oherecter and destiny of one- helf the race.” But mother fails to tell, in her book, one incident that I think most significant, and which I have often heard her relete; "It shows how far ahead she eee of her times and how clearly she see into the future. She asked Frederick Douglass, the great colored orator, who had oome down from.Rooheeter to ettend the Ccnventicn,°what it ees that his people, the slaves on the southern p1ente~ tions§ needeaﬁtp out them.on the right plane. "The ballot”, he promptly replied. “And I see that is exactly ehat we Women need“, said Mrs. Stanton. Then she explained d" T to him.thet she had drawn up a resolution, tetdshe intended to present to the »%“"'5"5;3 ‘ Convention, and he must immediately jump to his feet and make e speech in favor of its passage, and then she would do likewise. The resolution reed: “Resolved, That it is the duty of the eomen of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right of the elective franchise.” “éﬂ-Q i,/¢¢¢,{;§::’,¢¢ ii; ey mother told Er. Douglees that in the conﬁerences they had been holding before the Convention, ehen she had maintained that the ballot in the hands of eomen'ees the keynote to the situation, Lucretia ﬁott had exclaimed: ”Oh3,Lizzie, 26 if thee demands that, thee will make us ridiculousi ﬁe must go slcwly.“ And my father, aha usually stood by my mother in all she did and saiﬁ3 and aha disc spoke and‘ﬁorked for the cause of wnman,'was so amazed at her .9‘ daring,'when she confiéad ta him what she intended doing,and sp distressed that she would not listen to his advice, that he left tqwn and dié not attend any of ths'meetings3 But mother felt she was right, and nething anyoae saié coulﬁ turn.her from.her path. Thenﬁ tee, she remsghered the advice given her by Daniel O3C0nnel1 years bafore in Ireland: “Always ask for the uttermpst; than you may get semethingi” Of course those on the platformywere furious at her for springing her reseluticn on the ﬁonventiont it created hot debate, but the brilliant éefeﬂse, of Bouglass and her own elcquence and logic so roused the audience that many arese and spoke for her side; and after a two hours’ tussle it was carried. v ﬂ’ ' 4 ﬂ 4') /~',’ /' u r éﬂemand fram the first was those three . 40 So that Elizabath Cady Stant0n's 1/’? 05/ little worés ~ "VotesJfor Womami“ Susan B. ﬁnthony was not present at that first ﬁonventiens she did met some inte the mavemant until three years later, in lﬂﬁlu Show less

[Guilad a] Mar 1 1861 Mr. M. Vassar My dear freind[sic] I just write to congratulate you upon the near consummation of your long cherished place for a Female College. I believe the enteprize[sic] to be one greatly needed to supply one of the most pressing demands of the times and that it will meet with the cordial sympathy of good and wise men and what is [seen] valuable, the approbation of God You have chosen to do this work yourself, rather than to leave it in the charge of executives and,... Show more[Guilad a] Mar 1 1861 Mr. M. Vassar My dear freind[sic] I just write to congratulate you upon the near consummation of your long cherished place for a Female College. I believe the enteprize[sic] to be one greatly needed to supply one of the most pressing demands of the times and that it will meet with the cordial sympathy of good and wise men and what is [seen] valuable, the approbation of God You have chosen to do this work yourself, rather than to leave it in the charge of executives and, I am persuaded it will be vastly better done Yourexample too, will not be without its influence upon others who wish to do good but who accordig[according] to common custom propose to do it when are dead. Like David you have chosen … your own life to serve your generation by the will of God. The generation to come after you will be the better served thereby. I trust that God will spare you to witness the practical & successful operation of the plans you have so generously devised I suppose you have received many suggestions as to the kind of training to be given in the Institution, but I cannot refrain from submitting this to your Consideration, that a depart--ment[department] of instruction in household duties should be established. It is lamentable to think that while custom prescribes a cause of instruction adapted to fit young ladies to perform their [act] gracefully in society, it demands almost nothing to qualify them to preside over the domestic arrangements of the family. I believe that grater[sic] discontent in occasioned in households by the wane of practical knowledge in this aspect than in any other Let us have if need be a little less knwledges[sic] of Latin & Music and a little more of the mode of taking care of a household I bid you God speed my friend in this laudable under-[taking]taking[undertaking] It is a high [brow] to have your name associated in future times with such an enterprise With my kindest regards to Mrs Vassar I remain with great esteem Yrs[yours] etc Wm[William] F. Hansell Show less

/ ,’i y / epRfOgQVg t 5'-0,‘, 9 X‘ \i_ . v48 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May ninth, nineteen hundred and eighty—four, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted; Edna Cers Macmahon, Professor Emeritus of Economics was born 9 February 27, 1901 in Riga, Latvia, the daughter of John William and V Alvia Julia Lischmann Cers. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was a child and she grew up on a farm in Massachusetts. Edna began her long career of... Show more/ ,’i y / epRfOgQVg t 5'-0,‘, 9 X‘ \i_ . v48 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May ninth, nineteen hundred and eighty—four, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted; Edna Cers Macmahon, Professor Emeritus of Economics was born 9 February 27, 1901 in Riga, Latvia, the daughter of John William and V Alvia Julia Lischmann Cers. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was a child and she grew up on a farm in Massachusetts. Edna began her long career of community service by sharing with neighboring farmers helpful information from her careful reading of agricultural bulletins. A favorite teacher persuaded her to change her original plan of going to a normal school; instead, she entered Radcliffe at age l6, working her way through college. A seminar with Frederick Jackson Turner inspired her life-long fascination with the influence of the frontier and of geographic mobility upon American history. At age 20 Edna began graduate work at Bryn Mawr On the Susan B. Anthony scholarship. The next summer, in 1922, she met her d d. . future Vassar colleague, Margaret MYBPS» when they b°th le 1S°“SSl°n ' d t Br Mawr. groups at the School for Women Workers in Industry hel a yn ' Ph'l d l hia when they learned that Y°u"8 "°men °n Strlke at a 1 a e P _ - ' 11 they decided Clothing factcry were being arrested illega Y» . - - ‘ themselves arrested at to provide publicity bY getting -2- the strike site. With support from a young male friend from an Old Philadelphia family, they began interviewing the strikers On the picket line. The police hustled them off to the city jail where they briefly sharéd a Qell next ta a young woman who called out cheerfully: "What are you in for? shoplifting?" The venture ended with a double standard in sentencing which left them furious; their male friend was fined, but the future Vassar economists were let off with nothing but an admonition. In 1923 Columbia University appointed Edna as the first woman to hold its Gilder Research Fellowship. At Columbia she studied under Wesley Clark Mitchell, pioneer institutional economist, whose course on economic theory provided the framework for her thinking about economics. From her studies with Mitchell and with two other famous institutionalists, Thorstein Veblen and John R. Commons, she drew the lesson that economists should be critics and shapers of the societies they study. In 1924 she accepted a fellowship from the newly-founded Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government, an experiment in studying at the intersection of theory and public policy. She received her Ph.D. in 1930 with a doctoral thesis on labor injunctions. While working toward her doctorate, she investigated child labor in Maryland and Delaware canneries for the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor. She also worked for the District of Columbia Consumers‘ League in 1926 as it brought pressure for the enforcement of District laws on maximum hours for women. In 1927, while employed by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, she began a study of immigrae tion which continued subsequently for the Council on Foreign Relations. But with teaching her long—term goal, she was glad in 1929 to become an _3_ inst - G ructor of economics at Hunter College. In that Year Edna married Arth P ' ' ur Ihlttler Ma°mah°n» then associate professor and subsequently Eaton pr°feSS°r °f Publi¢ administration a t Columbia University They had two chil ' dreni Gail» now livin ' g in Austria wh h ' ~ ere er husband is a diplomat, and Alan, now a physigigt at the University of Texas. During their childhood, the family lived in Croton where Edna helped run a cooperative school inspired by what remains durable in John Dewey's theories of education. She also ran an annual plant sale for the school notable for the stream of varied advice that accompanied her sales as she visualized each purchaser's plot, its probable disadvantages of soil or shade, and the owner's probable lack of time or knowledge. In later years members of the Vassar community would benefit from Edna's advice on gardening and from the well—developed aesthetic imagination which informed it. That imagination could be seen in the gardens and houses she arranged, and especially in the beloved cottage at Lake Awosting with its wonderful relating of domestic comforts, works of craftsmanship, and the natural beauty of the setting. While still at Croton in the late l93Os, Edna began to travel for research and for consulting assignments. In 1941-42 she served as Director of Research for the Division of Minimum Wage and Women ln h d d Industry of the New York State Department of Labor and also ea 8 . . . O . . . Off‘ f Price the EcQnQmlCS unit in the Consumer Division of the lce 0 Administration. Ed . . d the Vassar fagulty in 19142. At that time the Vassar na ]Oln8 . . - d . t Qf a joint department, economics an economics department was par -u_ sociology, which would shortly become the economics, sociology, and anthropology department-—B.S.A. Edna found the philosophy of the department to her liking. Abstract theory was not for her——she always regarded economic problems in the context of the overall problems facing a society. She described the introductory course in an article for the Alumnae magazine in l9H9: The teaching of economics at Vassar has always been directed, rather deliberately, toward a broad understanding of the economy as a whole, and to analysis and discussion of the major economic issues which confront our society. The introductory course, in particular, frankly aims to equip students to exercise their responsibility as citizens intelligently rather than to provide a mastery of economic principles. This does not mean that theory is neglected, but that it is constantly taught in relation to concrete problems to which it is applicable. The emphasis necessi- tates a continuous search for ways of making theory a more practicable tool in the analysis of current problems. Under Edna's influence the department introduced an introductory interdisciplinary course for the joint department, a course which flouished for a number of years. Economists, sociologists, and anthropologists together prepared the year—long introductory course and a required senior seminar. Students majored in one discipline. _5_ Edna's Special fields -'th' - wi in economics reflected her philosophy- consumer economics ' Amerwo ' ' 0 _ an economic histor ' Y» economic development. Her students were ' - - » ln the Vassar tradition, encoura ged to go to the original sources and th 9 ese sources were often Opepatin ' - - 8 lnstitutions in the community Field tri ‘ - ps to farms and factories were a re gular Part of Economics lO5 and Poughkeepsie residents were surveyed on a variety of topics. In the mid l96Os Edna worked with other faculty in the development of an interdisciplinary course on the river and its impact on those living around it. Her participation in the course was inspired by her long observation of the Hudson and her concern for it before "ecology" became a popular term. A late colleague said he always wanted to follow Edna around with a tape recorder for she was a veritable fountain of ideas. But she was interested primarily in people and in doing. Although she published several journal articles, she never found enough time for her own research, especially for her study of Poughkeepsie shoemakers which was in advance of its time in methodology. Her tracing of craftsmen over time through census and city directories anticipated by more than a decade the historical social mobility studies which became important in the 1960s and 70s. Edna retired from Vassar in 1966, but continued her teaching in the . . . H l d extensive State University of New York for three years er a rea y V _ . . ' sed. She had been activity in the community beyond the College lncrea t t f Dutohess Community College from its founding in 1957, a rus ee o _ _ . - ' d in its formative period. playing 3 ma]OP role in setting policy ur 8 ard for seventeen YEBPS, until 197a‘ She served on the BO ’”!‘\$4'- ~ 161 In government, she served on the Advisory Committee to the Consumer Counsel to the Governor of New York and, in Dutchess County, on its comittees on tax policy and on economic opportunity. Politically, she was an active member of the League of Women Voters and of both the Vassar Democratic Club and the Dutchess County Women's Democratic Club. She delivered countless addresses to community groups, ranging from the Dutchess County Council on World Affairs to the Newcomers’ Home Bueau Club, from the Anti-Defamation League to the YWCA, and from the Poughkeepsie Business and Professional Women's Club to the Dutchess County Grange Tax Comittee. The topics of these talks expressed the range of her concerns: consumer economics, anti-poverty programs, county planning for water and land development, integration and quality in education, and travels with her husband in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Also expressive of her concerns was her membership in the Poughkeepsie Friends Meeting. Bowdoin Park, on Poughkeepsie's bank of the Hudson, is an abiding embodiment of Edna Macmahon's care for the land and for the people of the place where she lived for nearly three decades. There, the Edna Maemahon Trail for the study of nature commemorates her leadership in reclaiming an abandoned waterfront for the use of the community. In 1978 Edna moved to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where she died on July 2%, 1983. \hntHal\h¢dlhnl\Qnin,\inIIl1l|\0@ll0II ‘A hnnbllho. muuuuuwuaumn-nmqgquq. luv-¢a\hnrabltl\y\olnbl1lanIpIo¢u\|uqq_|.@§ wwvh. tiwwbvlcw. mvvollwhaumualnauducn Ilnhattawoodtdltlno. !alt\lnba&—0Q\Qqﬂﬂ|p Dhﬂonlqnn QlI.1t1tohlothoIQ0lIUOl|ﬂOIlOd_l»ﬂﬁ onnnltyocvtoonlactlnnltajohugottnruﬂqnnlcilq honnnounoa Inopocthlly Ulﬂtﬂ, cub tum. Quinn <¥~i':- 3%” *5, Show less

dl l Jl»).L»7' ,.Ll' f , 5 '4‘; ’-'Yé§ _‘ V 1.; 7 ' ‘ . ,1,-" 1"‘ fl < i . > V .;!r;_?=¢\- v R ,§§, At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Charles Carroll Griffin was born on May 24, 1902, in Tokyo, where his father was Professor of Economics at the Imperial University. His family returned to the United States in 1913, settling in... Show moredl l Jl»).L»7' ,.Ll' f , 5 '4‘; ’-'Yé§ _‘ V 1.; 7 ' ‘ . ,1,-" 1"‘ fl < i . > V .;!r;_?=¢\- v R ,§§, At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Charles Carroll Griffin was born on May 24, 1902, in Tokyo, where his father was Professor of Economics at the Imperial University. His family returned to the United States in 1913, settling in Westboro, Massachusetts. Charles attended Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1922. Then, seeking horizons beyond the academic, he was off to South America for seven years, two in Argentina and five in Uruguay,'in the employ of the National Cement Company. He returned home with an interest in Hispanic American culture and a knowledge of the Spanish language that were to last him the rest of his life. Beginning graduate work at Columbia, he also served as an instructor in Spanish there in 1930. His next venture the following year was as a Research Associate of the Library of Congress, to go to Madrid, where, enrolling at the Centro de Es- tudios Hist6ricos~~at that time perhaps the most significant concentration of liberal intellectuals in the Republic—-he supervised the transcription of historical documents in the Archives of Seville and Valladolid. The next year he was again at Columbia where in 1933 he was awarded the M.A. Nineteen thirty- four brought two important personal events: marriage to Jessica Frances Jones, a graduate of Reed College, and the acceptance of an instructorship in history at Vassar. The early forties brought a period of great concern in the United States for closer relations with Latin America. Men who knew the field were in demand, and Charles Griffin was ready to supply the need. In 1940 he went as exchange professor to the Universidad Central in Caracas, Venezuela, the first United States citizen to serve under the program set up by the Buenos Aires Convention for International Cultural Relations. A letter written later by the Director of the university to our ambassador pointed out that "Dr. Griffin's lectures W€re the first ever given in a school of higher learning in Venezuela . . . regarding the discovery, the conquest and the colonization of North America.” An article in a Venezuelan magazine in 1941 characterized him not as the typical "fat, red—faced North American", but as an aristocratic Castilian: until one heard his "slight Anglo—Saxon accent", one might have mistaken the tall, slender professor for a resident of Burgos or Segovia in a play by Lope de Vega or Calderbn. It might have added, "or a portrait by El Greco." Charles came back to Vassar in 1941, as associate professor; but was off again in February 1943 to the State Department in Washington, where he served as Assistant Chief of the Division of Liaison and Research in the Office of American Republics Affairs. He returned to Vassar in 1944, this time to a full- professorship. Charles served as visiting professor at many places including Columbia, Oé» _, r. I. C, -2- Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Wisconsin, and at the Universidad de Chile. But happily for Vassar he always returned here where his own course in South American history had entered the curriculum, a break—through in the tradition that most history offerings should deal with our European background and the United States. For years it was traditional that every member of the department should teach the one introductory course offered, a survey of European civilization. Charles later regaled his younger colleagues with accountsci'his struggles to cope with "all those popes and emperors." Although most of his teaching at Vassar was in United States political and diplomatic history, his scholarly work lay entirely in Latin America. At in- tervals he represented the United States as forwarder of pan-American affairs, in Chile in 1950 and in Ecuador in 1959, in l962 at the Salzburg Seminar on American Civilization, and as delegate to the Conference on Contemporary Latin American History at Bordeaux. He published four books on Latin American history (one with a Spanish translation, one written in Spanish and published in Ca- racas), and was contributing author to five others. (A selective bibliography is appended to this Minute.) In addition he contributed articles to practical- ly all the scholarly periodicals in his field, and also to the more general historical journals. His last major scholarly achievement was as editor-in- chief of Latin America: A Guide to Historical Literature (1971), the first inclusive bibliography in that field. His place as leader among Latin American historians was recognized first by appointment to the Board of Editors of the Hispanig American Historical Review, and as Managing Editor from 1950 to 1954. In 1970 the Conference on Latin American History gave Charles its "Distinguished Service Award", in the form of a handsome plaque which, characteristically, he kept trying to hide from view. Few of his colleagues or students at Vassar were aware of the extent of his scholarly activities or of his international reputation. "Charles is such a modest chap," wrote his chairman on one occasion, "that it is only when one digs it out of him that it becomes evident" how extensive his achievements and honors were. Self—doubt, humility, and an awareness of his own frailties made him wonderfully understanding of the anxieties of others, and made him the best of all people to turn to for sympathetic advice. Countless colleagues, friends, and students could say, with Sarah Gibson Blanding, ". . . when things got really tough I could always talk with Charles and knew without any doubt I was getting the best and most unbiased opinion possible. Of all my colleagues I counted on him the most." At Vassar Charles served four terms as chairman of the history department. For the last two years before his retirement in 1967 he was first Acting Dean of Faculty and then Dean of Faculty. He felt a deep commitment to the local community outside the college, and took an active part in politics. Among other activities he served on the Dutchess County Committee of the Democratic Party and as Director of the Dutchess County Council on world Affairs. In 1968 he became the first Executive Director of the Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area, and from 1968 to 1970 served on the Board of Trustees of the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Marist College, and in 1969 became secretary of the Board. But it was as a member of this faculty that we knew Charles best. For him, loyalty to Vassar was no mere catch—phrase, but involved him in genuine financial, ///“ / /:>8 I3? and perhaps even professional sacrifice. He turned a deaf ear to offers to return to the State Department at a salary far above anything Vassar could give him. He did the same to other attractive offers from the Rockefeller Foundation, Stanford, U.C.L.A., and Cornell because, to quote a letter from his chairman to President Blanding, "of his interest in working at an institu- tion in which he believed as heartily as he does believe in what we try to do at Vassar." In February 1950 Miss Blanding wrote him while he was Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, enclosing a new contract, saying, "I hope like fury you are going to feel like signing. We have missed you and . . . have kept our fingers crossed wondering if Wisconsin was going to wean you away from us. As you can see, we have jumped your salary . . . which I am sure is not as much as Wisconsin could pay you [in fact, Vassar's new offer was only two-thirds what Wisconsin was paying him], but is all we can stretch at the moment." Charles happily accepted the economic sacrifice and returned to Vassar. He, of course, would not have called it a sacrifice. He had abundant ex- perience of great universities, and none of them gave him the intense intellectual and emotional satisfactions that Vassar did: students who delighted in and responded to his broad-ranging intellect and provocative, questioning teaching; colleagues who could be waylaid for speculative discussion or riotous argument; department, comittee, and faculty meetings in which he could observe the wit and cantankerousness, wisdom and perversity, mental agility and abnormal psy- chology of his colleagues. He took affectionate delight in displays of insti- tutional absurdity and human folly, which Vassar offered in prodigal abundance. Charles never forgot what it had been like to be a young, inexperienced instructor, ”. . . Newer and younger [faculty] members . . . instinctively feel him to be their friend,” his chairman once wrote. One of them later recalled: "I first knew Charles at a crucial time in my life—-at the beginning of my career. He quickly became for me a kind of mentor, such as I had never in graduate school . . . By watching him in action in faculty meetings . . . talking to him at faculty tea, or simply chatting with him on an evening . . . I got some idea of what it meant to be a scholar, a teacher, and a man of integrity. Charles and I had our differences--we really were not very much alike——but his example for me was central to my life." Charles came to Vassar at a time when, as he recalled three decades later, "the college . . . was more self—contained than it is today." The Vassar comunity dominated the social as well as the professional lives of a large proportion of the faculty. Depending on their tastes, they used it as a vast salon in which to hammer out their ideas in friendly yet critical company, as a stage on which to develop and display their eccentricities, or a kind of en- counter group in which to express their inner hostilities and aggressions. Charles did his best to maintain the notion of the faculty as an intellectual community even into the fifties and sixties, when outside at“factions, whether professional or personal, were drawing the attention of both zaculty and student body away from the college. It was a mystery how Charles managed to produce the extraordinary bulk of his publications and pursue his professional activities on top of a heavy teach- ing load. For he always seemed to be found in the back parlor of Swift, in the Retreat, or at faculty tea, engaging in anecdote or argument, covering every -4- subject under the sun. ". . . His intellectual curiosity was insatiable, as his fund of knowledge was almost fathomless," one colleague recalls. ". . . What I think of most in connection with him was not just his helpfulness and companionability," writes another, "but those glorious, continuous, shimmering days and nights we all had at Raymond Avenue. That for me was the Golden Age . . . we all belonged to Charles's extensive, amusing, and beautifully domestic- ated world." Charles played an active role in Vassar politics, serving on most major committees, and as president of the local chapter of the A.A.U.P.; in the 1930's he was much involved with the Teachers‘ Union. He firmly believed in maintain- ing the authority of the faculty as a corporate body, and in seeing that the body exercised its powers wisely and responsibly. when Alan Simpson was inau- gurated as President, Charles spoke in the name of the faculty. "The Faculty of Vassar College has never been a placid, harmonious body," he warned the new president. "Because of our nature as questioners, our training as critics, and our diverse associations and interests we are likely to provide opposition as well as support to your endeavours." Charles spoke often in faculty meetings, and one never could be sure in advance what stand he was going to take on an issue. while his commitment to basic principles—-academic freedom, faculty power, individual liberties--never faltered, he embodied the definition of an intellectual as one who is continual- ly and systematically questioning his own opinions. He belonged to no camp, and voted and acted as his conscience and intellect directed. Impressive as he was in faculty meeting, Charles was at his best in a small group, late at night. He delighted in the varieties of human nature, the in- tricacies of thought, and the techniques of politics. But above all he loved conversation. For him, as for Dr. Johnson, conversation offered the best alle- viation for the pain of existence. It was his chief joy, a means of adding to his stock of knowledge, of encountering new ideas--the more subversive and he- terodox the better--and of savouring the pleasures of articulate sociability. Of colleagues in other disciplines he could ask a simple, sincere, and yet so basic a question that one found oneself rethinking ideas long taken for granted. Charles was a moderate historical relativist, for whom the conviction that absolute certainty was an imposible ideal was.not a depressing, but an ex- hilarating belief. For he enjoyed the process of debate more than he cared about the outcome. But while pragmatic and flexible in his approach both to questions of historical truth and educational policy, he never abandoned his moral convictions for the sake of expediency. Intensely sensitive to personal attaﬁksv he 8¢ted a¢¢0rdin9 to his conscience as chairman, as dean, and as individual, never swerving from what he was convinced was his duty for the sake of popularity or a quiet life. President Simpson has summed up the qualities for which we loved Charles: "A dearer man we never knew--gentleman, scholar, wit. I never saw him without thinking of the motto of New College, Oxford——‘Manners makyth man‘. He was . . . a model of good sense, good-heartedness, and fidelity. when I asked him for help he always replied that he would do anything for Vassar—-and did so." -5- Respectfully submitted, ,\ ..1 . _ Donald Olsen, Chairman Q ’ ), ~c , / _.' / ¢ , ‘ _,, 1',‘ /{/,» . .' / \ , , / I '/’-»»1,‘(-"// ~ ,.“/ ~" rt 4, , j M " .>~'L, ( J‘.-1, Mildred Cani'pbe 11 .'/ I 22,,/;j£, J Evalyn Clark ..-/c’. " - - ‘" ,-‘W. V \ A/~" ' - ~ / Christine Havelock A 1./1. ‘:1/1 4 Antonio Marquez / /0 /// _6_ ¢v'¢~€¥¢z»/>1 C-_C, > Bibliographical Note His publications include The United States and the Disruption of the §panish Empire, 1810-1822 (1937), Latin America T1944); The National Period in the History of the New World (1961, with Spanish translation in 1962), and Los Temaspsociales y Economicos de la Epoca de la Independencia (published in Caracas in 1961). He edited and contributed to Concerning Latin American Cu1tur§_(l940), and contributed chapters to Ensayos sobre la Historia del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico, 1951), a commemorative volume in honor of Emeterio Santovenia (Habana, 1958), Conocimento z_desconocimento en las Americas (1958), to vol. XI of the new edition of the Cambridge Modern History on Latin America, 1870-1900 (1961), and to A.P. Whitaker, ed., Latin America and the Enlightenment (1961). In addition he contri- buted articles to the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Haryland Historical Magazine, the IntereAmerican Quarterly, Revista de Historia de America, Boletin de la Academia de Historia (Caracas), Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, and the Vene- zuelan RevistafNaciona1 de Cultura. His last major scholarly achievement was to edit the bibliographical volume, commissioned by the Library of Congress, Latin ‘ America: A Guide to Historical Literature (1971). 17 I W ' 7 " 'J—. Show less

Creator

Skot, John

Date

1530

Creator

Burroughs, John, 1837-1921

Date

January 17, 1894 - July 24, 1894

Text

17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. -- Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I... Show more17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. -- Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I feel I see, and what I see I feel.Clear and sharp this morning, like Nov. Ground bare; grass yet quite green. Mercury down to 24 degrees this morning. 18 Mild with SW wind. Julian and I have our first skate on the river; ice less than 2 inches. 19 Like an April morning, clear, still, mild; raindrops hanging to the limbs and grapevines. Objects steam in the sun like a morning in summer. Sounds very noticeable. Rumbling of wagons, barking of dogs heard from over the river. Very few birds this winter, except crows. Now and then a large flock of goldfinches. Few English sparrows. On anopen winter like this the birds disperse over the open country. A deep snow would drive them about our habitations. 20 A bright and beautiful day. How naked the world seems, no snow, no verdure, no clouds. A fine skate on the river; condition all perfect, a glare of ice, a medium temperature, and a still air. Not a breath of wind. I fly up and down like a bird. At night, Julian and I skate an hour by moonlight, a rare treat. How we dash off into the dimness over the black smooth surface. -- These days I am hacking away at my Whitman matter, cutting, burning, rewriting. My matter mproves under my heroic treatment, but I doubt if I can make it worthy the subject. Health not very good past two weeks. 21 Mild, overcast, with sprinkle of rain in P.M. Signs of fog. The steam from the passing train swells and increases and stretches far behind in a long, tapering window. 22 Cleared off in the night as silently as usual. The weather is in a most gentle and placid frame of mind this winter. The storms sprinkle a little, or spit a little snow and then fold their tents like the Arabs and steal away. Fog this morning. P.M. Clear, warm, still likeIndian summer -- insects dancing in the air -- a day to walk through the fields and stand long by the bars, or lean upon the wall and look long and long over the brown, weedy lifeless fields. Almost brings the bees out of the hive. 24 Another attempt at a rain from the South, with only a slight sprinkle. Mercury up to near 50 degrees. 25 Cold wave last night, clear and lovely today, but sharp. Julian and I go to Black Pond skating; fly like birds over the glassy surface -- a fine time. Not a speck of snow to be seen. 26 Mercury down to 12 degrees this morning. 27 Winter again. The snow came like thief in the night, about 5 or 6 inches, and is still at it, from the North, which means that the storm clouds really came up the coast. 28 Bright and lcear adn sharp. Mercury down to 10 degrees this morning. The large opening on the river in front closed up this morning. -- That Death awaits you and me and all men is of little account. But that the race is to become extinct, that the earth is to grow old and die, and the sun itself wither like a leaf and be blown about the barrens of infinite space -- this strikes one dumb, and paralyzes the soul -- this is the abyss of science into whic e cannot gaze. What bow of promise spans it? That the very soil which hold out dead must become lifeless meteoric dust! Human monuments must perish, but the solar system is to be disrupted. How many times may this have happened in the past eternities! I see no reason to doubt that this game of the gods may not have been played over and over, and that even you and I may, in effect, have lived many times on other worlds, and may live again. The same results, culminations, must go on forever and ever. When great clock runs down, it will wind itself up again and strike the same hours as before.-- Forty years ago was my last winter at the old school-house in West Settlement. Of my schoolmates at that time I recall eleven who are dead, Walter Elliott of Bovina was teacher. In the spring of 1854 I left home to teach school in Olive; taught there fro mApril to middle of Sept. at 10 or 12 dollars a month and boarded around. Went to Ashland to school in Nov.; lefft there in Sprinng and went to Jersey in April in search of school; failed; came home and stayed all summer, working and studying. After haying started for Jersey again; stopped in Olive to visit; was again hired to teach same school at 20 dollars a month; taught till spring. In spring (April 20) went to Cooperstown seminary. Left therein July; worked in haying and went West in Sept. Tom Kniffin with me. Stopped at Dr. Allaben's in Polo. Engaged the school there and taught till spring of 1957. Came back home in April; stayed home till June or July when I engaged to teach at High Falls in Ulster County. Was married that fall September 13. Taught till spring. In July went to Rosendale to teach. Got interested in a patent buckle; threw up the school and went to Newark, N.J. Buckle failed and engaged school in Jan. 1859 at East Orange. Taught there about 2 years. In fall of '60 took the school at Marlboro on Hudson; taught there till spring of '62. Went home in April. Stayed all summer. In fall went to Olive to study medicine with Dr. Hull; heard of a school atButtermilk Falls, secured it, and went there to teach probably in Jan. 1863. Taught there, and began there the study of birds and flowers, stimulated to the latter by Prof. Eddy. Taught there till fall of '63 (made the Adirondack trip in August of that year) when I threw up the school and went to Washington (in October). On Jan. 4, 1864 I was appointed to a clerkship in the office of Comptroller of Currency. Continued a cleark till Jan 1, 1873 when I left W. and came to Middleton, N.Y. as Receiver of the Wallkill Nat. Bank. Wound up the affairs of the bank in 3 or 4 years. In Aug. '73to about '85. Built my house in '73 and '74, moved into it late in Nov. '74. -- Capt. Steven Burroughs was born in Bridgeport, Conn. in 1729. Died in 1817. A man of unusual mental endowments, ship-builer and astronomer: said to have invented the system of Federal Money. He had 4 brothers, Eden, John, Edward, and Ephraim. The latter was my great-grandfather, his son Eden was my grandfather. Ephraim died in Stamford, in April 1818, and nwas buried there in a field which is now under cultivation. He was born near Bridgeport (Conn.) about 1735. He hadsix sons and several daughters. His sons were Eden, Curtis, William, David, Daniel, and Ephraim. Eden, father's great uncle, was the father of Stephen, the notorious. Eden was a Presbyterian minister. 30 More snow, pretty heavy, about 10 inches now on the ground. Weather mild. 31 Bright, mercury 40 degrees. Feb. 1 Showing again this morning. Storm center seems south of us. Ver deliberate, evidently means business. -- Snow turned out only about an inch of hyperborean chaff. 3 Mild, overcast, mercury 42-- How common in literature is the sin of over-writing. It strikes one as vulgar, like over-dressing. The piece has a studied, formal, artificial air. Simple things must be simply said -- all things must be as simply said as possible. A man must work a long time to get out of the ambition of writing of inflating and bedecking what he has to say. I think this was at times or of the sins of Franis Parkman. I judge so from extracts I have seen of a sealed paper, giving an account of his life, which he left with a friend, and which was opened after his death. It is full of the balancing of period and is more like an amateur than like a master. 5 Cold wave; down to 2 degrees above this morning, clear and still. 6 Down to zero this morning. Bright and still all day. Had a skate on the river. -- In saying that Homer and the Bible are not literary, I mean they do not savor of literary or artificial culture, or of conscious literary art. They savor more of the larger culture of life and nature. From this point of view Tennyson is more literary that Wordsworth, Longfellow that Bryant. Milton than Shakespeare, the later novelists than Scott and Fielding. There is a deeper seriousness in Wordsworth than in Tennyson, in Whittier than in Lowell, a More profound humility and religiousness. It is not mrerely the seriousness of the scholar, the poet, it is the seriousness and humility of the man. I would have the unadulterated man, or human, flavor always predominate, as it does in the greates works. The Bible was not written with a view to literary edification as The Princess was, or Maud, or the Fable for Critics were; but for moral and spiritual edification. The literary spirit must always walk behind the spirit of universal love and sympathy, the spirit of man as man and not as a literary expert.8 Milder, a thaw at hand. -- Just finished A Window in Thrums, a delicious piece of work -- would rather have written it than all Mr. Howell's or James have written. How one loves these characters! because the author himself loved them. If Mr. Mowells only had this girft of love! P.M. Thermometer up to near 59 degrees. Bees out of the hive. 9 Snowing, moist and heavy. Mercury up to 36 degrees. 10 Deeply saddened by the death of Archdeacon Ziegenfusz, a man I had come to love. Only a few weeks ago he was here and passed the day in this room with the rest of the "Gang" as he called them -- the picture of health and good nature. His chances of long life seemed vastly better than m own. His wife died only a few weeks ago, and this calamity seemed to have broken him up and killed him. He was a man to love for his genial good-fellowship, as well as for his fine mind and character. I feel a keen sense of personal loss. Going over to the station last night I said to myself, Here have I lived in this place 20 years, and am not yet wonted to it. Twenty years of youth here, and these hills and valleys and river would seem like a part of myself; now I look upon them with alien, reluctant eyes. I seem only a camper for a day and a night. So much more plastic and impressionable are we in youth! As manhood is reached we begin to harden, and by and by our affections will not take on new shapes at all. 13 The boss snow storm of the winter so far, nearly a foot of snow, much drifted. Mercury down to 18 degrees, began yesterday afternoon. -- Attended the funeral of Ziegenfuss yesterday. A great crowd. Saw the body in the morning, looked like life -- never saw Death counterfeit Sleep more perfectly. No emaciation, no pain. His old mother came while I was standing near. Dear old woman! how her heart was wrung! how I wanted to comfort her! How the past must have come like a flood upon her! She remembered him as a babe in her arms, as a child by her side, as a ladwith his books and playthings, as a youth going out into the world, as a young man entering upon his career. How pathetic, how overwhelming! Oh, the inrrevocable past! Bishop Potter spoke well -- a metropolitan man, stamped with the air of a great city. Conventional, precise, dignified, clean-cut. Not a large, homely, original nature, but a fine-trained talent -- an epitome of better New York. Ziegenfusz himself was a true democrat. I loved him much and shall always carry a sweet remembrance of him. How mysterious, I heard several say, that such a man should be taken; the bishop said so, too. It is mysterious when weLucky if here and there on a writer's page we catch the scent of fresh new soil. Once in a while Carlyle, Goethe, Arnold, go in to the and we are exilarated, dilated; and then, again it is scratch, scratch. Rocks and stones with Carlyle and hard-pan with Goethe, or roots and weeds with Arnold. 15 More snow, 5 or 6 inches, this morning; half leg deep now. The cloud cows have had good grazing lately; they pour down their milk like cows in June. Well, they went dry early in the fall, and it is time. As the sun comes North he drives the hot moist air of the tropics before him, and we get the benefit. -- I never read a newspaper but I way, What a poor editor I shold make, according topresent standards. Nine-tenths of this stuff I should leave out. It is useless for a newspaper to try to be a private correspondent of every man woman and child trying to tell them the news about the people they know, and the matters they are concerned in. It should aim only at real news, important news for all, and when there is no news, it shold print a smaller sheet, just as it prints a larger sheet when there is extra news. Printing the same number of columns daily shows the absurdity of the whole business. If there is real news one day, and noe the next, then chaf must take its place, and readersbe robbed of their time. Does any same man more than glance at the editorial page? He knows before hand that he will find no honest, disinterested discussion there, but only lis and make-believe. 17 Cold, cold 8 degrees or 10 degrees below this morning, yet the air looks as innocent and genial as in summer; a soft, bluish haze veils everyting. Sun bright, sky blue, the steam whistles have that split shrill minor character of every cold weather. 18 Rain this morning from the south, mercury 40 degrees. Truly a weather spasm. The grip of Winter is not sure when these happn. P.M. cleared off; mercury 5024 Very cold. 10 degrees below this morning. Bright sunshine all day. Mercury only 2 degrees above at noon. Ice-men on the river suffer much. 25 Still colder, 14 degrees below this morning. But now at 10 A.M. temperature recovering rapidly. A storm evidently approaching. The past week has been free from storm. Cold wave began on Wednesday, the 21st. 26 A driving snow storm from the North -- that is from the South -- mercury about 15 degrees. Winter grown robust and desperate in his last days. -- Took down Carlye's Past and Present last night and leafed it over for half an tasting it here and there. I was glad I did not feel abliged to read it again. It is hard reading. I confess I did not want to be bruised and bumped about by a ride over this rough road. Run the eye over the page and bumped about by a ride over this rought road. Run the eye over the page and see how rought and thorn it looks, and it feels no less so to the mind. The great classical turnpikes, how different! In Carlyle's prose, at its worst, as in Browning's poetry, the difficulties are mechanical; it is not in the thought; it is in the expression. There is fire and intensity about it, but a blow with a club will make you see stars, or a sudden jolt give you a vivid sense of real things. Oh, do level and roll your road a little, Mr. Cor I fear travellers upon it in the future will be few. we do not want it made easier, but simply do not want to be bruised. Carlyle will never be forgotten; he is one of the few monumental writers but probably he will be named and referred to oftener than he is read. A book that one cannot read a second or third time -- A man's private storms and whirlpools and despairs and indigestino ought to appear in his work only as power, or light, or richness of tone. It is near 50 years since Past and Present was written, and none of its dire prophecies have yet come true. Yet I love this Scotch Jeremiah as I love few men. 29 Four or five inches of snow yesterday. Mercury down to 8 degrees this morning. -- Milton's poetry, for the most part, is to me a kind of London Tower filled with old armor, stuffed knights, wooden chargers, and the emblems and bedizzlements of the past. Interesting for a moment, but dead, hollow, moth-eaten. Not a live thing in one of his poems that I can find. Yes, there is a nightingale and a few flowers, and a human touch, here and there. But half a dozen pages would hold all that any man need read. The "Sampson" is said to be in the Greek spirit, but what business find he, a Puritan of Cromwell's time, writing in the Greek spirit?Why did he not write in his own spirit, or in the Puritan spirit? the 17th Century spirit? What business had he masquerading in this old armor? He put no real life under these ribs of death. His "Paradise Lost" is a huge puppet show, so grotesque and preposterous that it is quite insufferable. Milton seems to have been a real man, but he stands there in English literature like a great museum of literary archeology. He seems to have had no experiences of his own, and rarely to have seen the earth and sky, or men and women with his own natural eyes. He saw everything through the classic eyes of the dead past. Who reads him? Professors of literature, I suppose. He was a great craftsman no doubt, but he has been of no service to mankind, except a literary service; he has helped us to realize the classic spirit of letters, and the absurdity of the old theological dramaturgy. He spoke no word to any man's real moral or spiritual wants. March 1 Welcome, thrice welcome the first day of the almanac's spring! Bright and warm, a sap-day. May tempt the bees out by and by. Mercury down to 25 degrees last night. Snow a foot or more on the ground. Ice-men at work on the river, with 10 or 11 inch ice, half of it snow-ice. 2 Warm with signs of rain. Light shower in P.M. Wind shifting to N.W. and cooler. 3 Warm and clear, a day without a cloud, a real blue day. Stiffened up a little last night. but hardly touched freezing-point. Gentle breeze from the North. No spring birds yet. River opened last ight. 4 Sunday, Still bright and sprin-like. The spring birds this morning; bluebirds before sunrise, and robins and purple finches a little later the latter singing in chorus. The perfection of sap-weather. Snow running very fast. 5 Clear and warm, snow runs rapidly. 6 The bright spring days continue. Mud and slush very bad. But little frost at night. 9 Fine spring days, without a break till today. Snow nearly all gone. Excellent sap-weather. Sparrows in song. Turtle-dove on the 6th. Clouds today and sprinkles of rain in P.M. Gilchrist came last night on his way to Vassar. Rather too good an opinion of himself and work. 10 Still warm with sunshine. never remember ten days of March in succession so spring-like. Down to freezing only two or three nights. Near 60 degres some days. G's lecture at Vassar not a success, and I told him so. 11 Sunday. Cloud and fog this morning, but no frost. Sunshine in P.M. River opened night of the second.12 A little frost last night, calm and cool this morning. No wind yet this spring. Only a little floating ice on the river. Can the spark be said to sleep in the flint or the steel? No, only the condition of the spark sleeps there. The spark, the fire, sleeps in the arm, or inthe power that brings the flint and steel in collision. The motion, the force is converted into heat. 18 Sunday. The end of another week of remarkable March weather, April weather, in fact. In the past twenty years I remember nothing equal to it. Sunshine most of the time, and only a little frost. Showed on Thursday about 1 1/2 inch; all gone by 3 on Friday and mercury up to 55. On Friday my four friends from Poughkeepsie came up and spent the day. A pleasant time again. Yesterday Julian and I spent the day over by Black Creek after ducks. Killed no ducks but had a delightful day. Many signs of life in the air and water -- two or three kinds of butterflies, weveral moths, and occasional piping frog, insects in the air, newts and water bugs in and on the water, nuthatches calling, sparrows and robins and bluebirds everywhere. Not a breee stirring. Black Creek like glass as we floated or paddled up and down its length. Only a few ducks here and there. Only a few patches of old snow in the woods. Roads getting dry and vineyard calls us to work.My new man, Auchmoody, moved in yesterday. Buds of the soft maples swelling perceptibly. Saw my first snake and did not harm him. P.M Mercury up to 64 degrees, too warm. Hazel in bloom. Bees carry in pollen. Crocuses piercing the turf. Julian and I walk along the creek and back on RR. Arbutus buds swelling. Phoebe bird today. Standing after night fall now anywhere on the lawn one hears a slow stirring or rustling in the leaves and dry grass. It is made by large earth worms coming up out of their burrows and ruching out over the ground, whetlere for feeding or breedingI know not. My boy calls them "night walkers". In summer he hunts them at night to make bobs of. They are very sly and jerk swiftly back in their holes on the slightest sound. I suppose they feed your footsteps on the ground. 19 Warmer and warmer, up to 69 degrees. A sprinkle of rain in P.M; the fairest April weather. The little piping frongs in full chorus tonight; the whole tribe in full cry, also clucking frogs and the long-drawn Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r of the toad. 20 Cooler this morning, north wind. 22 Another big storm flashed in the pan. The fourth or fifith storm that had started from the West failed to reachus. Only a little dash of rain and mist and fog. Warm this morning, like lat April; grass greening and the plow at work. A cold wave said to be coming. No rain to speak of in over a month. -- A passage omiited on second thought from my essay in last Critic on the Sapphic Secret. "Discursive and experimental writers like Mr. Thompson and myself - the mere nibbling mice of Criticism, shoud temper their wrath when they sit in judgement upon the great ones -- the lions who make the paths through the jungles of the world. It is no fault of theirs that they are not micebut is it not a fault of ours that we do not see them to be lions?" 23 Rain set in P.M. and continued all night. Julian and I spend the day at Black Pond and Creek after ducks. See a few but no shot. Cook and eat our dinner on the miniature island, 8 x 10, near outlet of lake. Very pleasant time. The first warbler singing in the trees near us. J. has his new canvas canoe. 25 Overcast, storm threatened. 26 A white-was of snow this morning. All gone at night but getting colder. 27 A cold wave, down to 20 degrees this morning. Begin foundation of fruit house. A typical March day fo the chilly sort. 28 Like yesterday, with wind shifting to southerly in P.M. A storm approaching. How true it is that we want something untamed and untamable in a poet -- a strain of the original savage man. It is this salt that gives the tang to his poetry and that keeps it. No matter how great his culture and refinement if he only strikes back through it to his original uneducated nature and draws from that. He must be a poet before he has ever seen or heard of poetry. No doubt we strike here on one source of weakness of much modern poetry -- it does not smack at all of the soil, or simple, unlettered, human nature. The singers are poets mainly after what books and art ahve done for them. Their works are an intellectual and not an emotional product. Even in such a poet at Lowell, the original man is deeply overlaid iwth the scholar, and with literature. Which shall lead -- the emotional and intuitive nature, or the reasoning, intellectual nature? 31 Wonderful Aurora last night, beyond any I have ever before seen. Once while a boy I saw someting approaching it. The wonder of this display was that it made a complete circle all around the horizon. We stood in the midst of a greattent of streaming aurora. The ghostly flame shot up from north, east, south, west, and came to a focus just a few degrees south of our meridiam never before have I seen it rise up from the south. The apex of this tent was the scene of constantly shifting and vanishing forms of light. It was fairly apochryphal. At times it seemed as if the heavens opened at this point and troops of angels and winged horses came straight toward us. A pencil like Dore's would have caught many suggestions. Sometimes the electric clouds would gather at this point liek foam over the point of escaping fluid and whirl about. Sometimesthere would be curious openings through it where the black sky and the stars would appear. A deep crimson flush would appear here and there near the horizon and spread upward to the zenith. at 8:30 the motion of the streamers was hardly perceptible, but at 8:45 they were leaping up and very rapidly, the sublty impulses traveling up precisely like flame; and such ghostly flame! Never was anything more spectral and unearthly then the whole display. It was a wild dance of many-colored sheeted ghostly forms! What an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon rude primitive man. I myself could hardly keep down an emotion of superstitous fear.A warm fine day with summer clouds and wind. Work all day on the new foundation walls of barn. April 1 Warm and breezy; mercury about 50 degrees in morning. Grass quite green and all buds swelling. The spring three weeks ahead of time. Hepatica today out probably a day or two. 2 Bright, dry, cold. A day to burn brush and rubbish. 3 My 57th birthday. Clear, sharp, dry; mercury down to 20 degrees this morning. The sky so clear and dry that the cold air falls down upon us. House painters here this morning. Julian resumes scool. Settle up P.O matters with S. Health good, spirits ditto.8 Sunday. Ground white with snow this morning. We had an April March now we are having a March April. The week has been rather cold, quite a freeze two or three nights. -- What a difference between the artist's interest in a picture, and the public's interest! The people are interested in the picture, in what it tells them, in the subject, in what they see in it that agrees with their experience, or their ideals. The artist is interested in the art of the picture, the drawing, the coloring, the handling -- in the form and not in the substance. Which is right? The artists do not much respect the popular verdict. An artist will greatly admire a portrait that is not a good likeness, while the first thing that the layman demands is that it be like the original. If it is not like, he has no further interest in it. It is the old story of art for art's sake, and not for what it tells. The professional view of a doctor whom he met rubbing his hands with delight because he had just been called to a chase of some kind or other that was "beautiful" -- just according to the books, every feature was perfect. The book or the picture that has not something besides its art to recommend it, will not carry very far. -- Prof. Huxley says the ethical process and the cosmic process are at war -- the former combats the latter. And yet if your ethical process is not in keeping with the laws of nature, if it be not really founded upon the cosmic order, will it last? will it carry? Can the settled order of the Whole be combatted? Do we combat it in setting up the moral order? Certainly not. The conflict is not fully cleared up by Husley. Our benevolence, our humanity prompts us to interfere with the law of natural selection, the survival of the fittest in seeking to prolong the lives of the unfit. We do prolong them, but evidently to the detriment of the stock. Moral value, moral goodness -- what are they? Are they founded in the constitution of things? Self-denial, self-sacrifice, heroism, mercy, forgiveness, etc. are these things contrary to the eternal verities? Man confronts Nature and puts her under his feet, but only within certain narrow limits. He does not make the tide rollback, but he utilizes it, rides it. He cannot change the nature of lightning, but he can use it, control it, (not tame it.) We say Man tames the lightning, or tames the elements, but that is only a figure of speech. They are untabalbe. He measured them and adjusts his wants to them. He tames the animals; he subdues them. He tames them his own animal nature; he lets the ape and tiger ide. The cosmic process of course includes man and lass his doings, since he is part of the cosmos, and the ethical process is at war with the cosmic process only as the lever is at war with gravitation. A new element is introduced, the will of man, which sorks upon and uses the old order. Man uses Nature and is part ofher unconsciously, while the animals do not. He is an animal plus a developed (more or less) moral consciousness. By reason he uses Nature. (The lamper-eels use Nature also when they go up stream for the stones which the current helps them float down to their nest.) The moral order is opposed to the animal order -- is not that about all? Must think further on this matter. Is the ethical process analogous to the cultivating and improving of the surface of the earth -- draining, clearing, shaping, fertilizing? Is the farmer at war with Nature? In one sense; but unless Nature favors him, where is he? 9 Windy, chilly. Froze some last night. Sheets of snow all day yesterday and a very chilly air. -- Dick Martin just dropped in to show me a handful of young 'possums, very young -- 16 of them -- likely newly-born mice. The mother was picked up dead on the RR, head and one leg cut off and these young were in her pouch each clinging to its teat dead. The connection seems almost as vital as when they-- When I am flollowing my plow over a refractory piece of ground, and see it dip in here and come to the surface there, now and then the turning of the soil fairly, but as often only making a mark, I say that while that is not good plowing it is about as good as the best writing, so rarely do even the best authors more than turn up fresh soil here and there -- a steady uniform furrow, opening up virgin soil -- who turns it? We arewere in the mother's womb. They are born in about two weeks after gestation begins, and placed by the mother in her pouchm where they fasten upon the teats. The teats, Dick says, are long and slender like a little skunks, 'possums, muskrats, woodchucks, and foxes. The red foxes seem to be run down by the fast night trains. 11 Forty years ago to-day -- how appalling that sounds! -- I began my first school, Tongore, Ulster County. A driving snow storm from the North. Winter again in earnest. Moved the wagon-house today, and now call it the fruit house.12 Five or six inches of wet snow yesterday. Flurries of snow in the air this morning, with north wind still blowing very chilly. Mercyry a little above freezing. -- Some natures are essentially moral, the categories to which they refer all things are those of good and evil; others are intellectual; their categories of reference are those of the true and the false; still others are esthetic; they see only the beautiful and ugly, only poetry or prose. 15 Lovely day, the world flooded with light; warm, dry, north wind. A luxury to be out doors. Fine yesterday also, with some cloud. drive to Sherwood's in PM.-- How curious, almost startling, the thought or discovery that there is such a thing as light or sound -- these two universal phenomena that play such a part in our lives. That they are sensations -- merely, physiological effects of vibrations in the ether. But what causes the vibratons in the ether that causes our sensations of light? some material force certainly. The same with sound; the waves are there, if the ear is not. Light effects even the rocks. So there is an influence, an emanation from the sun or the lamp which is real, and which makes the conditions for the sensation we call light. There is such thing as sweet or sour, hot or cold; these are sensations. The universe is an illusion, a creation of our own after all. 17 The fourth of the charmed days. Bright, dry and warm. The yellow redpoll warbler today. Walk up to the creek for suckeys but get none, but how beautiful the full, clear, cold stream rushing along in the sunlight! Began plowing vineyard to-day. 20 Two days of cloud and blue vapor -- veiled, soft, quiet, moist orodous April days. 21 Shower with thunder last night, and light rains during forenoon. Bright and warm in PM, and rain again at sundown. 22 Rain with thunder in morning and cooler. Misty all forenoon. The April drought fairly broken.Notes for an April poem: The soft maples are crimson and the buds of the elm swarm like bees in the branches, The bee comes home with golden thighs from the willows, and honey in her bag from the arbutus. School children pass with their hand full of hepaticas and arbutus. The newly-lpoughed fields glow like the breasts of robins. I walk in the new furrow in the stron sunlight till it is photographed upon my spirit. The farmer strides across the brown field scattering the seed oats at steps alternate. The sparrow, the robin, the jay, have nest-material in their beaks. The kinglet pipes his fine lyrical strain in the evergreens -- he flashes his ruby crown to his mate. The white-throat sings on his way northward. Long and long the highhole calls fro mthe distand field. The first swallow laughs down to me from the sky. From the marshes rise the shill, infantile chorus of the little piping frogs. From the trees above them comse the o-ka-lee of the red-wing. The song of the toad tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r is heard in the land. The first dandelion lies like a gold coin upon the greening turf.Something delicate, prophetic, spiritual is in the air. The bud-scales are falling from the buds -- some are fragrant and gummy. The light shower fills the air with wild perfume, The bluebird lifts and flickers to his mate his cerulean wing, In the twilight the robin-racket is prolonged and intense, The cow bird sits beside his dusky mate on the top of the tree and pumps up his liquid, glassy notes. In the leafless woods the pedestrian partridge beats his drum -- his own inflated breast. Amid the alders in the moist bottoms, the marsh marigold have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the moist bottoms, the marsh marigolds have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the tree-dotted landscape, the greening rye fields delight the eye. Ere the month is ended the shad-blow makes a white mist, here and there along the forest borders.27 A week of fine April weather, slowly warming up till to-day it is nearly summer heat. Again the maples have shaken out their fringelike blossoms, again the cherry trees are white. Season much earlier than last. A few days ago the air was filled with a dleicious wild perfume, a pungent, stimulating, bitter-sweet odor. I could not trace it to its source. It seemed to be general and to fill all the air. Was it from the just-bursting buds of the sugar maples? I know of no toher likely source. Tops of the trees over in Langdon's woods just faintly etched in opening leaf-buds. Currants blooming. On the night of the 24th went to Kingston to hear and see Ingersoll Much stouter and redder than when I saw him last May; much too much belly. Can drink whiskey, he says, but not wine. Wine makes him throb and throb. He ate his supper in his room after the lecture; drank iced-milk and iced-water freely. Lecture full of telling points, much sound argument, and many eloquent passages. He said, in talking with me in his room, that he was by no means sure that immortality was desirable; he would name conditions before accepting it -- unconditional immortality he would refuse.28 A lovely day, feminine day, veiled, tranquil, almost voluptuous. Mercury at 78. A little rain in afternoon. -- Had a glimpse of father the other night in my dream; we were at the table and a plate of trout was passed around, and I was father pick out the big one, as I have so often seen him do. I smiled in my sleep. 29 Clear and cooler, with North wind. 30 The last of the April days, clear, warm, still, with just a tinge of vapor in the air -- the beginning of brided veil ofSummer. Cherry and plum trees in bloom; pear trees spring and apple trees showing the pink. Carpenders began the new barn t0-day. May 1st May day shads in warm soft, wind southerly, wide hazy clouds in the sky. Wood thrush to-day in my grounds. The first big run of shad yesterday. 2. Hot and dry -- 88 degrees in shade to-day. Apple trees leaping into bloom. 3d Cooler this morning; North wind. Leaves half out; a tender mist of green over Langdens woods. Grass and grain need rain.-- In P. library I glance over Mr Grosses "Note on Walt Whitman" in the New Review for April. Must read it at my leisure some time. Gross is a very clever, but a very small critic and man -- has spent his days in overlading and sorting and inspecting the small potatoes of Enlish literature (and no literature has more small potatoes) How much he knows about [crossed out: English lit] said literature that is not worth knowing that it would be a mere weariness to know. He is a man of details and of deft careful workmanship, but entirely superficial. You never strike a great thought or a fresh thought in his workand his criticisms compare with Arnold's, or Scherer's as a vine compares with a tree. The professional critic, if he be not a large nature, can make nothing of Whitman. A man like Gosse, trained in the schools and overtrained is in literature, much like the orthodox theologian in religion. How the latter snorts at the idea that there can be any religion outside the church, the dogmas, the forms, the Bible etc. The former in the same way snorts at the idea that there can be any poetry outside of or in opposition to the rules and models and schools. He sees nothing but a barbarous, unregenerated poetic nature in W.W. Mr G. thinks the secret of W's attraction for certain minds is that they see themselves in him etc. Well, a poet in which such men as Stevenson Symonds, Emerson, Thoreau and others see themselves, must be something and somebody to be sure. In Mr Gosse's poems we see only little Mr Gosse. When we can all see ourselves in him [crossed out: we] he will have increased immeasurably in size and importance. 10 Lovely May days without a break, nearly summer tem-perature. A brief shower on Sunday the 6th getting pretty dry. Showy orchis in bloom and fringed polygala. Leaves all out. Trees clad in their under garments, tho' some of the maples look fully clad. Go to N.Y. to-day to attend Authors Club dinner at night. 12. Back home to-day from N.Y. Still dry and warm. Apple bloom all gone. The last run of shad (apparently) in the river. Was greatly shocked on my arrival home to learn of the sudden death of my neighbor Mr Hathaway yesterday morning. While I was at the authors club, speaking or eating and making merry, he was struggling with death. He has been my neighbor there under the hill for 10 years and I shall miss him much. I could almost look down into his chimney and I shall greatly miss the smoke from his fire going up into the air on winter mornings, and his friendly voice and manner. A blameless, good natured, rather intelligent man, without childrenwith a wife fearfully neat. A deacon in the church, a cooper by trade, and in all ways a kind and brotherly man. My last word with him or vision of him was last Friday the 4th of May. He had lived many years in Brooklyn working at his trade. Came here 10 years ago to look after the big ice house. Age, 67. To-day is his funeral day (Sunday 13th) -- The [crossed out: onl] main difference between a precious stone and a common stone is not in the substance, but in the arrangement -- the crystalization. In substance the charcoal and the diamond are one, but in form how widely they differ. This crystalization is not an easy thing. It requires almost an eternity of time. 19 Weather the last week warm and dry till last night, when a fine shower fell, nearly one inch of water. 19 Go home on morning train take up some shad; reach home at noon. How green and fresh the old spot looks, how the bobolinks sing. all are well. Stay home till Wednesday, the 23d Wind and light rain till last day, the bright and warm. I go fishing over in Meeker's Hollow; take 33 trout to the song of bobolinks. A hot pull home at 12. Take a few trout from West Settlement stream on Monday. Return home in afternoon. 24. Began raining last night from a depression in Va, yesterday, and has rained steadily all day. No let-up for a moment. Easily an inch of water has fallen. Grape arms 2 feet long and begin-ning to break some. 25 Rain continued all day and all last night, and is still at it; threatening to be a regular debauch of the rain godsStill my drains are not running. The earth was very thirsty. Grape arms dropping off this morning. -- Slow rain nearly all day. -- I do not seem to have made any proper record of my visit home from the 19th to the 23rd. Heavy East wind with light rain most of the time. I strolled about in the usual way, listening, looking for something I could not find. I sat for an hour or more on two occasions on the top of the hill above the house looking over in West Settlement and listening to the shore larks singing far above me. Twice after supper I walked out on the hill and looked long and long off east into Montgomery Hollow and trying to conjure up the old days I poked about the grave yard on the hill and found the grave of Obadiah Scudder, 1804, the oldest date I could find. I watched the boys draw dung and tried to get up courage to takea hand in, but could not. One afternoon I went down into the hemlocks and wandered along the little stream, all much changed since my boy hood. How green and fresh the country looked, with a sort of pathos over all, the pathos of my vanished youth. 29. The big rain of the season thus far yesterday; began about 2 P.M. and rained nearly all night, nearly 2 inches of water in 10 hours, drains all running this morning; broke the grape arms badly. I find they break less in stony, gravelly soil; the worst breakage is in the soft sandy soil. Bright and cool to-day. 31. Another rain set in last night from the N.E. a hell of rain seems imminent. The locusts have dropped their bloom. Daisy has come again and clover. June 1st June comes in like a huzzy, cold and sour-- clouds with spurts of rain. 3d A fine day at last but very cool. Dr Bucke and wife here. The 17 year locusts are coming out think in places. 4 Rain again last night and this morning. Clearing off is no good any more. Before you can turn around the rain is upon us again. It is "water affirmative" as Goethe says. No matter where the wind is it rains. Where two or three clouds are gathered together it rains. This is the third week of rain every day but one. 5th Threatens rain again. Coldand sour. We go to West Point. Actually clears off in P.M. and we have a fine day. 6 Cold and sour again threatening rain. Hellish weather, worse than in England. Barn not yet finished. Straw-berries just ripening a little. A cold wave coming from the N.W. with frosts in its course. In P.M. walk over to the weasel swamp. Find three interesting things -- The 17 year locusts coming out all along the borders of the woods; some little bushes loaded with them. Under certain trees find their little earth mounds [crossed out: thick] many of them yet sealed up, or with only a peep hole in them. Saw a little moth that evidently imitates bird droppings on the leaves. When disturbed it would fly a few rods and alight on [crossed out: the]a broad green leaf, spreading itself out perfectly flat, simulating the droppings of a bird. It was yellowish with a faint dark brown etched upon its wings. It would not move till touched. I have read of a moth or butterfly found on some island of Oceanica that exactly mimmicks the excrement of a bird upon a leaf -- this of course for protection. Found the nest of the worm-eating warbler beside the path in the edge of the woods. As I came along down the path on my return a small brown bird started up from the ground a few feet from me. From the glimpse of it I had, I took it to be the oven bird. Looking to the spot [crossed out: from] whence it started I saw another bird with a striped head standing on the edge of a nest in the side of the bank with the droppings of one of the young birds, whose heads I saw beneath her, in her beak. My appearance upon the scene was sudden and the mother bird was surprised while waiting upon her young. She stood motion-less, half turned toward me and kept the white mass in her beak, neither of us stirred for a minute or two, when I withdrew and sat down a few paces away. The male bird now became quite uneasy and flitted from bush to bush and uttered his alarm chip. The mother bird never stirred. I could see her loaded beak from where I sat. In two or three minutes she dropped or otherwise disposed of her unsavory morsel, but kept her place above her young. Then the male bird, seeing that was the game, quieted down also and dis-appeared from view. After long waiting I approached the nest and pausing 10 feet away, regarded it some moments. The bird never stirred. Then came nearer, and when I sat down within 4 or 5 feet of the nest the parent bird flew out upon the ground 3 or 4 paces from me and began trying that old confidence game of the birds upon me. She was seized with incipient paralysis, she dragged herself about in the ground, she grieved and tottered and seemed about ready to go all to pieces. [crossed out: The male now sudden] seeing this game did not work she began to use her wings and to scold sharply. The male now suddenly appeared upon the scene, and, ture to his name had a worm in his beak. Their scolding brought avireo upon the scene, which they seemed to regard as an intrusion. The nest was composed mainly of dry leaves. The young were probably a week old. I shall visit them again. 7. Cold and sour; almost a frost last night. No heat since April. We greatly overdrew our a/c in that long succession of bright mild days in March and April. 9 Weather still fair and beginning to warm up. Nearly 80 to-day. Grape arms have broken very badly this year. Met poor old Mrs Green last night trudging down from Esopus to take train here to go to Newburgh to see her son fatally hurt on the R.R. Poor old mother, I could have wept with her. Son a worth-less fellow, hard drinker, better dead than alive, but his mothersheart could not give him up easily. There were tears on her brown wrinkled face as we talked. It was very hard for her she said, so old, so much trouble, so much hard work as she had seen. [???] children, a drinking husband and sons, poverty and yet the old woman tries to keep up a cheerful front, and has preserved a certain innocence and sweetness. The methodist dominie went down and prayed beside her son; went on purpose, she said. "It was showing him a good deal of respect" said she, and she was touched by it. Probably the first mark of respect the poor devil had ever seen. I have known her for 20 years and yet she cant get my name right; calls me Mr Burrell generally. As she stepped along alertly to get on the train I saw how pinched and crooked her old back looked, bet. 70 and 80 10 No clouds to-day. Summer heat over 80. A lovely June day. Walked to the woods. Found nest of water thrush, and came near another, the brood had flown. Locusts in full chorus to-day. How warm and fragrant the breath of the meadow I passed through. A very little grape bloom to-day under the hill. 11. A still dim day of great heat, 90 in shade. 12 Still very hot; sky veiled with vapor or smoke till noon. Go to Vassar. A heavy shower at 6 1/2 P.M. 13. Hot, with streaks of sunshine cooler in evening. 14. Bright, cooler; grapes blooming. 21. Very warm the past ten days, from 80 to 90. Light thunder showers. Grapes done blooming yesterday, except a few stragglers, about the same as last year. Currants earlier. The 17-year cicadas humming and flying everywhere. Buildings at last finished and painted. 23. Heat continues, 92 to-day on north end of house. Began the currants. I do not remember such a hot June. July 1st No let-up in the heat, from 86 degrees to 91 degrees every day. Only light dashes of rain; getting dry. Finished currants yesterday, about 4 tons. Prices low.2d Mercury 90 degrees to-day. Start for Snyder Hollow, Julian and I. Reach Larkins about 10 A.M. Stay there in the camp till Friday the 6th A delicious time -- never had better, Julian a good camper out. Great pleasure in being with him in the woods and teaching him wood craft. Took [crossed out: ???] and ate about 90 trout from 5 to 10 inches. Began to get cooler on the 4th. Stopped at Phoececia and caught 2 fine rainbow trout. In the ice-cream saloon the boy asked us, "Will you have it in brick or in bulk?" "If the bricks are bulky," I said "We will have it in 'brick'"? "But what is the difference?" "In the brick it is all in a cake, and in bulk it is shovelled out.""'Shovelled out sounds good", we replied, "we are very hungry for cream;" we will try it both ways" which we did, and liked the shovelled out plates the best. Reached home Friday night. 10. Very cool for past few days and very dry; things begin to suffer much for want of water. 12 Start for Adirondacks to-day on invitation of Mr Chubb. Very hot. Stay at White Hall over night. Reach the Willey House in Keene Friday P.M. Stay one week. Very cool and delightful. The grandest mountain view I ever saw.Like the Chubbs much. Give a talk on Nature in Parlors on Saturday night, and one on Whitman on Sunday night. On Monday we climb Hurricane Mt. The view amazing for extent and sublimity. Meet Prof Davison and some of his philosophers; the Prof. an old time student and thinker -- lives on the past. Nothing new or vital in him. (The new is always vital, and the vital is always new). Return home Friday the 20th; heat terrible -- 94 in the cars all day, 96 in Albany and Troy stations. Very dry, -- a light rain last Sunday the 15th. 22d Cool and cloudy, about 1/2 ich of rain last night.Strays the drouth, but does not cure it. Grapes and all things suffering. A summer of great heat and dryness so far. -- I can well understand the feelings of the old Romans that prompted them to thrash and flog their gods when things went wrong with them. I never knew of a god that did not deserve flogging every day in the year. Take the god of rain, for instance. What a mess he makes of it, always drowning some part of the country and burning up some other part. 24. Cloudy, misty, getting hot. A hot wave near by no rain to speak of. Getting ready to go out to old home, Julian and I. Show less

Creator

Huntley, Olive L.

Date

December 5, 1862

Text

New Woodstock Dec. 15th Mr Matthew Vassar Dear Sir It is not often that I venture unintroduced, into the presence of an entire stranger; but in consideration of the magnificent gift you have recently bestowed upon the women of our land, I am encouraged to address you upon a subject which, for years, has been to me, one of absorbing interest. I am the third of four sisters, between the ages of twenty two and thirty, in a family of twelve children- ten of whom are still living- who from our... Show moreNew Woodstock Dec. 15th Mr Matthew Vassar Dear Sir It is not often that I venture unintroduced, into the presence of an entire stranger; but in consideration of the magnificent gift you have recently bestowed upon the women of our land, I am encouraged to address you upon a subject which, for years, has been to me, one of absorbing interest. I am the third of four sisters, between the ages of twenty two and thirty, in a family of twelve children- ten of whom are still living- who from our childhood have for (…)writing to you is to ascertain upon what terms we may become members of this Institution. It has ever been our intention to devote ourselves to teaching, if we can secure a thorough education to prepare us for that important work, and we feel that no place could be found more desirable for obtaining that preparation, than the Vassar Collegiate Institute. Pardon me for taking so much of your time; my earnest desire to secure this object is my apology. Will it be too much to ask you to answer the question I have proposed? Whether we can enjoy the advantages of this noble Institution or not, permit me with all fine women of our land, to thank you warmly for the kindly interest you have manifested in the intellectual and (…) training of our sex; assuring you that thousands of the sons and daughter of our land will yet bless the memory of him whose Christian kindness has prompted this noble enterprise. On behalf of my sister and myself Yours very respectfully Olive L. Humtleyhoped at some future day to enjoy the educational advantages, we so highly prized: but although poverty has never been our portion, yet our parents have never felt able to incur the necessary expense. The advertisements of the different institutions of learning, which have roughly met our eye, have been perused with a longing to share their benefits, which only those, similarly situated can fully understand. Some time since, a matter of the Vassar Collegiate Institute, when in process of erection, attracted our attention, and (…) new hopes; but, ignorant of the plans upon which it was founded, we supposed its advantages were far beyond our reach, and relinquished it with a sigh: hoping a way might yet be opened for the accomplishment of our long-cherished desire. Last evening an Article in the Female Advocate and Guardian caught our eye, which led us to hope that here might be found that which we had so long sought in vain. My object in1862 Olive L Humtley New Woodstock Madison Co. NY Decb 5th Answered 21 Decb wishes to enter as pupil Show less

Fortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement. International Council of Women Assembled by the NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION of the United States, To be held at Washington, D.D., March 25 to April 1, 1888, inclusive. COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, Pres., Tenafly, N. J. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y., MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Fayettville, N. Y., Vice Pres. at Large. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Chair. Ex. Com., 405 North Pennsylvania St., Indianapolis, Ind. ELLEN H.... Show moreFortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement. International Council of Women Assembled by the NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION of the United States, To be held at Washington, D.D., March 25 to April 1, 1888, inclusive. COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, Pres., Tenafly, N. J. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y., MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Fayettville, N. Y., Vice Pres. at Large. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Chair. Ex. Com., 405 North Pennsylvania St., Indianapolis, Ind. ELLEN H. SHELDON, Recording Secretary, Q. M. Gen'l's Office, Washington, D. C. RACHEL G. FOSTER, Corresponding Secretary, 1909 N. 12th Street, Philadelphia, Pa. JANE H. SPOFFORD, Treasurer, Riggs House, Washington, D. C. Riggs House, Washington, D.C. Jan 22, 1888 My Dear Miss Booth Yours of the 16th made feel both very happy & very sad- - Glad because you expressed so much sympathy with our great undertaking- and very sorry because you cannot give us the paper on Journalism- We have not yet found any one who will- but am hope some one will feel moved to say yes very soon- I hope you & Mrs Wright will both be able to steal away the week of the Council- - At any rate to be with us on Monday April 2d when we hope to see organized a promising International Council- - Well officered- & well started for good & useful work- And to accomplish this- we shall you & the like of you You will- I am sure give a mention of the Council in the Bazaar- Perhaps we ought to put an advertisement in both the Bazaar & Weekly!! Do you think so?- or will both contribute good items- for our good works sake. Very Sincerely yours & Mrs. Wright Susan B. Anthony Copy Alma Lutz Collection Fortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement. International Council of Women Assembled by the NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION of the United States, To be held at Washington, D. C., March 25 to April 1, 1888 Riggs House, Washington, D.C. Jan 22, 1888 My Dear Miss Booth Yours of the 16th made feel both very happy & very sad- - Glad because you expressed so much sympathy with our great undertaking- and very sorry because you cannot give us the paper on Journalism- We have not yet found any one who will- but am hope some one will feel moved to say yes very soon- I hope you & Mrs Wright will both be able to steal away the week of the Council- - At any rate to be with us on Monday April 2d when we hope to see organized a promising International Council- - Well officered- & well started for good & useful work- And to accomplish this- we shall you & the like of you You will- I am sure give a mention of the Council in the Bazaar- Perhaps we ought to put an advertisement in both the Bazaar & Weekly!! Do you think so?- or will both contribute good items- for our good works sake. Very Sincerely yours & Mrs. Wright Susan B. Anthony Show less

Creator

[unknown]

Date

[After 1878]

Text

JOHN H . rmvmowo 181a - 1878 At the first meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College after the death of our late honored President, John H. Raymond, we record a brief statement of his work in this College, and an expression, altogether inadequate, of the love we have for his memorye We appreciate, as others cannot, the unceasing toil, the perplexity, the solicitude, the many discouragements which attended his heroic and successful endeavor to secure for this College its present eminence among... Show moreJOHN H . rmvmowo 181a - 1878 At the first meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College after the death of our late honored President, John H. Raymond, we record a brief statement of his work in this College, and an expression, altogether inadequate, of the love we have for his memorye We appreciate, as others cannot, the unceasing toil, the perplexity, the solicitude, the many discouragements which attended his heroic and successful endeavor to secure for this College its present eminence among educational institu- tions. We appreciate, as others cannot, the complica- tions of the problem given to him for solution at the time of his election to his office. At the outset, there was a Board of Trustees having the heartiest interest in this work, but pre- senting many shades of opinion on educational questions. And the Faculty, organized under peculiar limitations needed time and trial to give it experience and strength. And the demand made by the public upon this College in its earlier years, insisting that students sent hither should be trained to the accomplishments of the fashionable world rather than to the earnestness of the scholar, was a demand that he resisted with an unfaltering, a religious con- stancy, and defeated utterly, so that under his leadership a victory, complete, enduring, has been gained for the higher education of women. Beset by the ill-advised and persistent appeal of the parents of our students, with no pioneers to guide him, President Raymond cautiously and safely led this College through the wilderness of its first years. We know what his thoughtfulness has accomplished in the improvement of all the appointments and properties of the College, in securing for it the respect of educated people, in winning for it the loyalty of students, and in organizing a happy domestic regime. But these achievements made by devotion to the duties of his office, though they have commanded expressions of public JOHN H. RAYMOND (Continued) admiration, still seem to us to fade in comparison with the result he attained in promoting the steady growth of our educational work. Comparing the Scheme of Instruction" published in our first catalogue, with the clear and well adjusted cur- riculum now followed by our students we see the traces of his most difficult work, and his brightest success. While others point to his temperament, or to his scholarship, or to his literary and oratorical skill as the secret of his power in this College, we, recognizing all these qualities in him, point to his rare gift for organization as his prime endowment - a gift blending with comprehensiveness of plan a conscientious zeal for the performance of smallest details. This endowment made it possible for him to watch every interest related to his office, and insured the uninterrupted progress of Vassar College under his administration. We remind ourselves that our late President himself grew to loftier ideas under the discipline of his work. Each new success inspired him with grander hopes, to more intense endeavor. He led the way to broader freedom in the discipline of the College; and in presiding over our legislative deliberations, he had come to be the most advanced among us in demanding an unfaltering respect for the womanliness of our students. Always considerate of the weariness of his fellow- workers, he gave himself no rest. In recalling what he has done for Vassar College, we pay our reverent re- spect to his industry, to his fidelity, to his sacrifice of self, to his wisdom, which have laid our foundations so secure that no adversity, not even his death, can overturn them. He was modest, he was honest, he was cautious, he was patient, he was just, he was devout, he was faithful in all things. He was eminent, and he was eminently good, He is dead, but his work survives, I - 391-393 Show less

Creator

Bromley, Frances M.

Transcriber(s)

Hausam, Josephine

Descriptor(s)

Ditkoff, Andrea

Date

1870-1877

Text

PLEASE NOTE: Blank pages are omitted, and pages with text are presented in the order in which they were Written (in the original, the diarist left every other page blank from the beginning, and upon reaching the end of the book, began working her way back, Writing upside down on pages that had been left blank). From "The Checkered Scene"-- Dansville, N.Y. 1878 "Mr. Little has been telling me how he went home last night, after our little talk up in Paradise Gate, and had a dream... Show morePLEASE NOTE: Blank pages are omitted, and pages with text are presented in the order in which they were Written (in the original, the diarist left every other page blank from the beginning, and upon reaching the end of the book, began working her way back, Writing upside down on pages that had been left blank). From "The Checkered Scene"-- Dansville, N.Y. 1878 "Mr. Little has been telling me how he went home last night, after our little talk up in Paradise Gate, and had a dream about me. He did not dream that I got well, he said, but that I became helpless. That I was placed where scarcely anything about me was as I would like it to be - in a hard place - where nothing fitted - and the people about me were uncomfortable people - and little to my taste - but that amidst it all I was sucha happiness to others; which was so much better than getting well." "A little talk with Mrs. Evans tonight. I leave her feeling that there is a blessedness greater than any sadness in knowing that the Master is even now at the gate." "Dr. McLean said to me: 'My wife and I have remarked ever so many times that we would give anything if we could always look as bright as you do.' Blessed be the help that comes to do it! The Master remembers.""Pet's letter came today; and her "why nots" are so full of the unselfishness and heroism that I love so in her that I feel an uplifting. But, O, how it makes my heart ache!" "In due order breakfast. We might pass this over were it not that it gains in importance unspeakably the nearer one comes to not having any!"Sabbath evening- Oct. 9" 1870- A log-book! and mine! I said I'd have a log-book - said it long ago - said it every time I had a peep into Sue's upper, unstratified, bureau drawer, where hers lay nestled - comfortable and un-searchable. I'd like to be born such a night as this if I could be born to live and not grope. day times these mountains make us toil - climb - drag on! "To the heights" is what they say. Tonight they let us look at them and rest. "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem so the Lord is round about his people." Does that mean Hewouldn't miss us if we died? Not even a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father__Christ said that. He came down from the singing and the glory to tell us that. He cried for us, too. Oct. 16"- Blue and black_all wool! Pretty thing to run in one's head when the minister's text is "consider the lilies". I know the prayers and the metre_Long and common! Doctor told the Lord that "yesterday the icy streams dissolved." I did not know it. Then came the intense heat of summer, and the growing crops, and now the fading leaf reminds us of ourfrailty. It doesn't me! When I see the royalty of everything I remember that I'm born a queen, and longing for my kingdom possesses me, and never a thought that 'tis frail to be royal, or sorrowful for " the king to come to his own." Oct. 23" 1870 "And while he was yet a great way off the Father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." As long as those words read just so i shall never be afraid to die. i shall dream of the Father's house, .. as I dare dream of nothing else. I get so tired of myself. I want to run away from myself and be pleased andhappy just a little while. Nov. 4" 1870 - God can make a beautiful life even out of mine. I pray for it as I pray for nothing else. Twenty two years blossoming in frost flowers - only frost flowers - no pansies, no myrtle, no goldenrod. Nov.13" -- I want to see Paul - I want to know him. It is one of the dear dreams that are to be worked out in Heaven-and Heaven is a great many years long. I could sing tonight. I could talk to Christ. I can't always. Will there be any great blanks up there-can there be? Will I ever say when I have gone to Him and seen Him, "My vacant days go on-go on"?Dec.11"_ My thoughts tonight are organic & inorganic! The way of life is plain.._but tell me-Is there anything else that is plain? When do I pray & not feel the first heart throb those old words-"Friend of sinners! we are in the dark, and bewildered and sick at heart"? I've done a heap of thinking since Wednesday, or dreaming which is only prismatic thinking... A great deal of it is Castleton, but the space between and the way thither is full of shrinking and dread. It seems so hard to stop here - break off the little plans and comforts, and live through shrinking and desolation again! How I amlearning to love "being led" thoughts. Rain day-Jan. 15"_ Doleful! I kept away from myself all day. Blank verse - blank verse - will it ever be anything but blank verse? Aug 8- There's good natured little breeze frisking around here like curly-headed children in a hay mow._________ We touch lives at all angles that seem so satisfied, and I renounce such as I do the world, the flesh, and the devil. I grasp eagerly at any thought that makes the infinite distance between my life here and my life after some great change, called death, grow less and not so terrible. My child! my chicken! More help! more love! more light! .... Senior Editor has fled. The editorials, compositions, printing presses, type, ink, proof sheets, galvanic batteries, reviews, exchances, masculine tone, spurts, printing office, Willow St. & all the chicanery is left on my hands - two poor, bony hands! Life is span- I'm in a stew- Now will you help? Write an editorial-..I'll thank you someday. Prayer meetings may make some people think of tabernacles & Mt. Tabors and whatever's the pural of "good to be here" - but from some of them I couldrun and not be weary. That's the most orthodox way I can find to tell it. Blessed are they that ask for bread and do not receive a stone. The feeling of a great need is grateful to me for it is the precursor of a great pity and great fullness not far away. Castleton -- I feel to strange and lost for anything - I'm afraid to look in the glass for fear it isn't me.... I'm pretty well but tired. It doesn't pay to be tired but what's a man to do? Normal School - Mar-ch-ch-ch-sh-sh! +++ We have more prayers than provender. We have solemn roasts, solemn potatoes, serious pie, & a realizing sense of concocted rice. What will becomeof me in such a frame as this? Laughs are my vital breath.... Soon the bell will ring for supper - not to be eaten but served. Our conversatoin will be heaven, our bread emblematical, our digestion ritualistic. .... My doctor tell me..I must rest or die. Which is the biggest? I don't know which to take. .... These are days of heaven upon Earth, and I rejoice through & through. I'd blossom in purple & red if I knew how. Do you? - Mar. 14" 1871 - Patmos without the vision! Sunday, Mar. 19" 1871 - Mr. ___ is an exminister. I'vespanned him with Montgomery's measuring line wherewith he sounded the ocean's depths and pierced to either pole & his height is seventy six inches. His brain is the seat of sensation. ++++ He prays in minor scale-very minor-and is a very Jeremiah.++++ Mrs.___ you've read about. don't say you haven't for I know better. She abounds in S.S. books and religious memoirs. I never saw a live one before. ++++ I haven't made up my mind whether to be very much afraid of her or make a gasp or two toward "appreciating her worth"! The "Normals" here are awfully old. One of them has taught 37terms! but I find her docile+++ Imagine me before the old, the married, the big - to teach without a book! To be infallible, judicial, celestial, didactic four times a day! Sunday, April 16, 1871 -- I've written the date - anybody could do that. I wonder why we have to live such days. There is discipline in "so as by fire"- discipline even in vacancy - but to have no heart in anything and be simply stupid - where is the help in this? I don't believe I ever felt so utterly cut off from human help beforeAnything that makes me talk to Mr.___ is a terror to me - all his way are. But I believe God is going to help me through. +++ If I never why I was sent to Castleton God has known it all the time. If I could be necessary! - to you - to just a few as i would love to be - as I long to be just once and for always - it would not seem so often, "My vacant days go on - go on". +++I cannot be just a little to any one. I must be a great deal or nothing. "The heart to be all to" will not come to my life. It is one of thebeautiful things that is left out. Love calls to most. It called to me years ago and I Passed it by. It will not call again. ++++ Goodbye. I am very, very tired and only Fanny at that. "half of heaven is the not parting". Why the thought is half heaven! What won't it be to be there and say to each other "Always-always!" And Susie will let you come into her garden and mine where the glorified sumachs [sumacs] and firs are to be. There have been reasons for things, hours for things, andthings and things without hours for them. I used to wonder nights when I went for the milk, and used to [do] up much of my thinking, how it would seem to be twenty three. Now I wonder how it would seems to be a little girl and go for the milk. +++++++++ More than anything I am longing for the woods and hills. Does anyone love a wide stretch of sky and meadow more than I? +++ I thank God for anything that roots and grounds my faith in others. Living & working in thisworld is such a tearing down, pulling away process. My window opens on the grass-plot, which to be truthful must be further limited by the statement that some of it is brick plot! I am thankful for the little bit of green & the little bit of sky bending over it. All around is a high board fence +++ how much of my life lies before me in the pent up struggling grass. How it does fight! "Walled in", I say to myself, remembering how much of me is walled in. "All about ++ everything"! How very modest! Where shall Ibegin? When shall I stop? Would you have any objection to my taking a little bit of the time up in Heaven to finish? I'm afraid I shall hardly be able to get it all in this side. My experience has been that I never seem to get any father than Mr. W. in this world. Castleton--Jan. 18-1872. Something sent Miss H.__ up after school to kiss me & say somehow they all liked me very much. After she had gone one tho't was in my heart. It came rolling up from where the tears are, & the springs of life: "I don't believe I shall every be cross to my girls again."Sunday-Jan. 21--- Something must be done. I am all adrift. For days & days & days I have just gone on; and I must stop a little while & rest & think Tues. 23"- Spoiled another day for my girls, & wish-O yes-yes-yes- that there was help for it! Monday-29".--One thing I lay down for Frances-she must listen to me. "Don't let me hear one cross word this week! Love your girls too well-please do! My life opens into such large wide ways-&&the work makes me so happy && it is like giving the little ones the kingdom. Feb. 24"-- Our friend, philosopher & guide R.G.W. surprised everybody by rising to remark that he had nothing to say on the subject of grammar, butwould introduce to the association Miss Bromley. Nothing less than me - I might say "me less than nothing"! I remember one distinct thrill - from the rest I shall never rally. Monday, Feb. 26"-- What is macaroni? Who first harrowed mankind with it? Why must it be set before me & not desert [dessert] but gingersnaps? A gingersnap is a desert [dessert] but macaroni is dead men's bones. Tues. 27"-- The best thing we have set before our hungriness is rice pudding. How it came to be so good doth not appear but it possesses many saintly qualities. We always have it with beefsteak. Those days do not smile on butter. Thurs. 29-- Again the big noise in our house was me. 'Twasn't bringinga trunk down nor taking a trunk up, but talking Mr. Williams down & bringing life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness up. ++ You mustn't scold a man unless you want to ease your mind, or see what you can do, or show him you are not afraid, or give him an idea of his meanness - but to carry a point-never! Take a silken shuttle & silken thread & spin a man into anything you want - but don't scold him. Tues. March 5"-- Mr. Williams is on a perfect rampage. Stands primed & ready to go off any minute, usually: lately, he runs round to find things to go off about. hawk-like in his nature he looks for achicken & finds one. ++ I've heard of four-footed beasts, & creeping things, & fowls of the air: don't remember to have seen them combined before. +++ Do I get cross any? Not much. There is untold sunshine at the heart of things & it touches me. Thurs. 7"-- Annie A. looks like an untimely frost--bluely dreadful! Sat.9"-- The right proportion, said Miss G., is an ounce of serpent to a pound of love. She was in my room writing a cross letter - both of us cross everywhere but inside. Miss ___ wants to know. Do I tabulate food & clothing? Do I diagram what I don't tabulate? ++++ Mr. Williams prays with his eyes open & [L.] wonders if it isn'ttime his ... was multiplied! March 12"-- Another something that stopped: & I only stop once in a long times to think about it. "Time driveth onward fast, & in a little while our lips are dumb". +++ O for the quiet-calmed-down-toned-down, if need be! only let it reach me. "Friend of sinners! I am in the dark & bewildered & sick at heart!" March 15". O, if the breaths of spring would come faster, would do anything to make the leaves come out. We are cheered by prospects of snow! +++ All the poly things possible to e condensed within four walls take this howling wilderness as their business center. Sat. Mar.15"-- I have learned to fill my soul with a horror of Saturdays. I am in terror over the long dark hall, the sweeping around, above, below me, the orders from below, the inspection of drawers, the bells, the dinners, the harryings by R.G.W. But then I am not a ghoul. If I only had a nice sense of propriety all this would be vital breath - native air. March 27"-- In which I find time to pity myself.== The pivot on which the state turns appeared to us at the first class. We all came in in the afternoon without feathers - we had been picked clean!== The rest of it ishard++but I can bear it. "To distil the one elixir patience" - Must there be another crucible- & another- & another? Will I learn? March 30"-- spring is waiting be wooed-& so is somebody else. Well! March. 31"-- March dies in just such a storm as father died in. Such storms bring it back even over ten years. April 8"-- I am going to adopt Milton's style of address next time I talk to Mr. Williams, Like this: "Sole partner & sole part of all these joys, Earth's hallowed mould, O prince of men, off-spring of Heaven & Earth & all Earth's Lord, O sacred, wise & wisdom-giving Plant, my author & Disposer, what thou bidst unargued I obey"-- And he will answer (probably) "Fair Consort, my latest friend, associate sole"! April 13--Memorable for the contemplated talk with Mr. Williams. Are you sorry to hear that Milton's style was not ours? I know now - how things look different to us as we learn - I can that it is better for me to keep the assistant's place; even tho' conscious that upon me falls the principal's work & more than the principal's care. April 16"-- Winter has very fairly set in! "Come gentle spring! Etherial [Ethereal] mildness come." April 18-- I wish etherial [ethereal] mildness would come to me! I don't possess much. +++ Tt is such a relief to me to be busy setting myself right instead of other people. I know better where to begin! April 27"-- Mr. Williams asks t dinner would we have hot scotch or solid meat? We live to regret the hot scotch & long for solid meat. May2-- It is a sad & sorry thing when one is made to stand before one's self as I have today. +++ I have seen the good, the glory of living, & have fallen in the very presence of it. ++ I stand such a sorry wreck before myself. I have made shipwreck of a whole year. O how the words hurt! May 6"-- We ride down to see them go, & come back to put something in the vacant places so they won't look at us so. We can't see "flame & azure [b]indingeach other - we only see the moving & the places left. May 26" One of the kind of Sundays that I dread when I lie still all day. Thinking is so close to doing that it is hard to have to think when one cannot do. May 29"-- Annie is all in a maelstrom. She makes it a duty to be happy as little as possible, & stay so short a time as possible. +++++++ I will not worry. A pain to bear now that came near enough to be a pain would make me so miserable. I can lay "no plan for next year - not one. I can't see the way. May 30 Would I decorate? I saidnot. She was mistaken. Miss G. & I went ahead with a flag & an umbrella & a flower or two. +++ We came home for the loaves & fishes & found loaves but no fishes. may 31-- A. comes up & I do not spit out much of the hardness that is in my heart lately - the bitterness that comes over one when they have wrought much, loved much, & lost much. June 3-- And the mill goes round & round - & I - if not a hopper what am I? On to the day - the good time out doors - the gala time up in the trees - the rest up in the blue - the whirl in the mill - & the heartsick of it! And what did I do to drive awaythe heartsick for somebody else? Anything? How can I tell? ++ I come up stairs so whizzy & perplexed! June 4--Miss G. asks for tea at dinner. Mrs. Williams arises in presence of us all, unlocks emerald treasuries, wafting odors of Yaddo & Changcha fu chun passes to mysterious precincts eastward. Is gone a long time. We eat on. Reappears - gets a cup. Disappears. Is gone a long time. The door opens. Mrs. W. & the Tea! Someway I'll not ask for tea at dinner. June 6-- "the Lord knoweth them that are his"-- I'm glad for we have a hard time finding it out! The butter is abominable. Never mind - its intentions are all right -it meantto be good. June 7"-- I wish we could browse indiscriminately. We don't. We take "meals regularly". June 22-- My trials consist in getting hammer & nails. Mr. Williams deals out nails as he deals our matches - companionless. +++ We behold with our own eyes a bouncing shortcake in the kitchen window, but not for us. We go down to bread & butter & platitudes.. June 25-- I have had my talk with Dr. F. He made me see things & feel good & now I am coming back next year. June 26-- Pretty hard day, Frances - pretty hard day! June 29-- I do love a wide stretch of sky & meadow: it gives me sucha feeling of perfect freedom - especially when days stretch before me as wide & free as sky & meadow, as full of places for the sunshine to fall & soil for daisies to blossom. +++ How jolly it seems to be company-warranted to rest. July 19" Albany. Today has touched me where I ache & long-on my book side. It was gala-time to me up there in the State Library. I come back elevated seven pegs & a pole! Aug. 10"-- ++ O how glad I am that no one but me knows how I am longing for Broadfields! If only a little piece of it could come into this vacation! At home things are real & hard. We know not anything save "getting a school" & "earning money" & "paying it back".Aug. 17"-- The nicest thing in all day was sitting down by the window with Grandma to knit after the tea-dishes were washed & put away. i wish my life - the whole of it - could be washed & put away for a long time. Aug. 20"-- I cook a great while but not much! Aug. 22"-- It's "no not yet" day! Sept. 5--Castleton-- Things look better. Mother brings deliverance in her very eyes & we set to work cheerily. I never went to my first day with such a heartache & with so little to expect. ++ But I can challenge the promise of this word. I met Miss Bissell first & she throws her arms around my neck & bursts out crying.Sept. 15"-- The silent side - mine - is growing more & more silent as there is daily less to tell & more to bear. Sept. 21-- I wish these days would stay. Why need I when it isn't weather that keeps me fit to live but grace? Sometimes grace takes the form of weather! +++ Folks come & I see them: & they go & I'm properly thankful.... Sept. 29 - Sunday - ++ If religion consists in being pleasant to have about I might as well ask the dear Lord please can't I begin again! Oct. 7"-- When the base & rate are given how do find the percentage? that's what we talk about up at school. Can we afford a new oil-cloth for the dining-room? that's what we talk about at home. How can I come close 7 know - that's what I talk about all to myself. Oct. 18"-- Folks can live & still not have things as they want them. They can still live & not do as they have a mind to. These significant facts are chapter from my personal experience! Oct. 19-- The weather is like last hours with friends before they go. Oct. 28"--What makes me get so tired - so right down tired? I almost wish what I never wished before - that there not five days in a week - that there not forty weeks in a school year.Oct. 29"-- ++ I get up cross - so cross - so cross as never was. Nov. 1"-- ++ I go to school. Sometimes I teach school - other times I only go! Nov. 21"-- ++ I go upstairs to the hall to be alone. Things go so wretchedly I cannot teach. ++ A. comes up softly & puts her arms around me & says, "What do you want me to do about that?" I look about about as pleasant as the piano box & don't want anything. Poor A. goes down. I call myself a narrow neck of land, chiefly stone! Jan. 1" 1873-- Into Isaiah! What does that make you think of Fannie? Play that I asked the question a good ways from todaywhen I have grown up & out of & beyond! Today I only remember the words that have comforted me so & given me out of my storm a great calm - "For the mountains shall depart & the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from there, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed." O years! still let the promise hold me. Jan.6"/73 - Into a prayer meeting. +++I never did want God so much before. ++ The coming home part of the meeting was nice to me: it was like coming up thro' the pines into the world again.Jan 8"/73 - Into red bows & vanities. Did I wear a red bow? When my existence for a long time has been a protest against them. ++ Yes. I deliberately marched to the store, picked out a red bow, came home & tied it & donned the same. If I were the only one who advances on the lifeless bodies of her convictions! By & by I'll begin to resurrect! Jan. 11" - Into grinding processes. Jan. 13" - Into a Cumulo-stratus. I don't seek such places: but sometimes I wake & find myself there; sometimes I'm pushed thro' like a pneumatic railway! sometimes Mr. Williams holds one up for me to jump thro'.Jan. 29"/73 - Into the Promised Land. For what is it but a land of promise to me? ++ I've held it to my soul thro' thankless tasks and heavy happenings++ in days when he was more than usual Williams & I less than ever Frances. That she was there was all & everything to me. In that real land of promise when I glide thro' the open door into the first glow of the warmth & light will my first feeling be one of pain as I feel. My whole life for this? Feb. 3" - Into her eyes - & down deep. " 15" - Into the Spanish Inquisition. ++ One chairman to face & four gold-headed canes - I had never sighed for such bliss! Mr. Williams lookedlike the strongest fortress the Moors ever held in Spain. I only it is ended & Mother's room is the refuge whereunto I flee. Feb. 21"/73-- Into seas of it! Floods of it! ++++ But oh, how cosy [cozy] it looked at home when I came into a nice tea, & a big fire, & a Friday night spasm of content! Feb. 24"-- Into bliss for which I did not sigh. Mother say, "Never mind, it's your last term." The bliss is object lessons & Mr. Williams' face as he looks on "to see if I have the idea"! Feb. 26"-- Into a blue that is the most blue! and I got into it. No alternative is left me, not even that of the man who found hiseyes were out. +++ Poor Mother! how pale & sick she has looked all day. Mar. 2",/73 - Into losing the name of disciple. +++ Could I not have borne for Jesus' sake? I must impose on me sterner discipline, & heart pleadings for strength. Mar. 19" - Into a little more powder now, my boys! Mar. 28" - Into a long pull & a pull a good while. A day of gaspings in Arithmetic, of giant strides in grammar, of much ado about nothing in Eng. Lit., of clutching at & panting in Botany, of crawling Orthography, of leaping for joy in Natural history, of feeling along in other history& going at Algebra in gunboats! What does anything mean for me but school? Mar. 29"-'73-- Into Terra catena - in libera poena-desidero te - English cannot express it. I go reverently to Latin! How much drudgery can be squeezed into one day, & that a leaky, Scrooge-like A.M. - M. P.M. in March I shall know hereafter more definitely than hitherto. April 25"-- Into bein' & doin' & sufferin'. " 17"-- Into matronly perplexities. I do not entertain guests after the primitive style! To turn a cake or bake a kid is very different from nineteenth century breakfast getting. I am sadly inexpert in slicingham, or cutting cold pudding, or finding where Mother keeps things, & I forget to salt! But I do at last muddle a breakfast together. ++++ April 28"/73-- Into knowing how sublime it is to suffer 7 be snapped! I do not bear snaps with dignity. Gentleness & forbearance seems to have been left out of Mr. W.'s religion this morning. My religion was not expecting to be snapped-And so-! April 29"-- ++++ Then I went over to help Ella with her Latin saying sadly to myself, "O Fanny, you have a queer way of laying your life down". April 30"-- Into being a benefactor to Miss Bissell by giving advice which she does not follow!May 1"/73-- Into a night more dreaded than the day. There's no telling what a Board will do. I've always said that. So I was not surprised today when lofty honors were confered [conferred] upon me in the form of a call from Dr. Webber & Gen. G. to learn that it was the wish of everybody & everybody's friend that I should remain here another year & teach with Mr. Williams. I've just sat & held the dreaded thing in my heart until it seems too hard for me - & then the night came for me to toss in & wake every few minutes to think how near heaven was - & now how far. May 2"-- +++ I've worked two ways today. Outwardly - mechanically atthis & that: inwardly at the question "Shall I lay down myself next year that mother & Danny may still enjoy our home here, & the girls come back? or shall I go away?" There is no answer & the rain falls heavily - drearily. May 4"-'73-- Into holding out. ++++ I finish "Middlemarch" & lay it down saying over & over to myself its closing words: "That things are not so ill with you & me is half owing to those who lived faithfully a hidden life & sleep in unvisited graves".keep on asking in my blind discontented way, "What shall be done with me next year? Where can I go?" There's not an answer anywhere. May 9"/73 - Into a next- ++++++ "The one elixir, patience!" How often do I think of that when it seems as if all of me was being thus distilled. There will come a day when there will be a next - so I work hard & find a "forgetting" even in the life of a first assistant. +++ And grandma knits & knits-- May 11"-- Into wishing to be less miserable! May 13"-- Into the more I think I will the more I won't. +++ I know all the words in the Englishlanguage but rest. I rejoice to see the last skeleton of an examination paper dissected, compiled, & filed away. No wonder I never see sunsets any more! May 16"-73-- Into finding people to please & nothing to please them with - such experiences fall abundantly to my lot - they prove disciplinary. May 19"+++ I fish away with imaginary lines in imaginary water & fish up what might have been. ++++ May 22"-- Into feeling heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor. I am glad to come & find rest in Jesus. Glad of anything that takes me near to Him. May 28"-- +++ Today in my half-decided, sadly tortured state comes a letter from Edward Conant. "Will I go to Randolph next year? "O, yest," I say in my gladness at the thought that anybody want me - that's there's any place for me but this. "O no," I say by & by as I think of Mother & the pretty new house. +++++ June 4"/73.-- Into the new home. We enter it joyfully. Who can know how very good it seems to us? not in ++ its comforts alone but in the happier thought that, if God will, it shall be ours some day. We want mother to have a home all her own again; & we have brave hearts to work for it for her. ++++++++++O Father, reveal to me my duty! direct my feet for I do acknowledge thee! +++ June 5"/73-- Into a deep hard question that I cannot answer. And it grows deeper & harder & makes a burden of my thought to weary me. I am helpless before my life-problem. An answer now & here - its result for all time. I can't stay here next year - how can I! It seems almost wicked when I feel as I do. I can't go away next year - it seems too selfish in me to think of it. O is the right choice always the one that involves the greater self-denial? ++++++ June 7"-- Into taking comfort in the new house with Mother. ++++++++June 9"/73. +++ A new plan possesses me, thought up in a twinkle, but taking may twinkles to work it out. That's one reason why I don't like this world! ++++ June 24"-- +++ All feeling has left me but passivity to accept the best that comes - to let Dr. F. decide. He say stay. +++ July 6 - Albany... There is an ache - a dread in my heart - I have no strength to face next year with Mr. Williams. July 10"-- That Mr. & Mrs. W. will not go to Troy is evident. Won't I live to see the earth open somewhere & gulp him down? Why doesn't somebody want him?July 23/73-- My Latin moves slowly. It is hard for me but I creep on. My hopes rise & fall as a distant college looms before me-- And what will Mother do? is the only pause. Aug. 12"-- ++ I have not knowingly touched terra firma today. I have moved in one most joyous dream of Michigan University, until the year I have so much dreaded seems only as door. Aug. 30"-- I feel restless & stirred up. Nothing rests me or brings free visions of that all enfolding peace; & so I chafe on. +++ It seems so easy to let the Normal School & its troubles swallow me up body & soul: & I lend myself so ready to be swallowed.Castleton Aug. 31"/73-- Into standing before myself. +++ I need greatly these days the strength that comes from the Cross - the look from the Master that humbles. ++ Night comes - & I walk the streets & toss & toss! O Jesus! other refuge have I none! sept. 8"-- Into finding the stuff that R.G.W. is made of! Sept 10"-- A man has been raised up to teach me Greek! Like everyone else raised up for me he wasn't made to order - but I'll make him do. Oct. 12"-- Into the return of blessing. The day had so many things that were restful Oct. 19"-- Into beds of dying leaves.How lovely the trees begin to look. ++ And I, in among the rustling leaves & the lovely places can only think how near I am to being 25. The desolate places would not look to bare to me if Mother, too, was not growing old. Oct. 20"/73-- A letter- +for me. It treats of a fall of 45 ft & no bones broken; of a boy who will study good next term; of money to pay for a slate; of a lamp chimney & four window-lights broken! Oct. 21"-- What I feel like tonight is better conceived by the members of my profession than developed & recorded. Oct 23"-- Dreams of Michiganare like cold water to parched lips, like rest to heavy lids. Oct. 24"-- Into "This is the way the mill goes round"! Oct. 30"--Into patching up today to make it do! Oct. 31"-- Into the Greek Testament. Nov. 1"-- At home this evening is long & cheery: but I want Mother. That isn't all i want. i chafe so under this year's cross - it grows hard to carry & spring looks like a far-off speck. Nov. 4"-- It is what goes out from us from a gathered richness within, more than what comes to us from without that makes us know we live. A bright day - Nov. 5"/73-- Into a little more Greek, at once, my boys! That's all there seems to be of anything except school. A little Greek to read - a little Greek to study - a little rule or two - jump up in my faced every tired minute. But I don't die. I am quite alive. I shall sit up there & feel my way thro' 150 more days, just as tired as this, & then come home to 150 more Greek lessons increasingly hard. Where shall I find something good? In my new garters? Possibly! In Mr. ___? Who can tell? In the original Greek of St John? Always! Nov. 15"-- I've set everythingto rights but me, & I'm all to wrongs! Nov. 20"/73-- Our boy at home. We think he has improved. If God would only give some of us wisdom, strength, influence to hold him back from the pit that is digged - from the snares that lie in wait! Nov. 23"-- Into feeling unfeignedly comfortable.! Nov. 27"-- Home is so full of cheer today - there is so much in it that I want to keep. Nov. 28"-- A boy set down in our family seems to have been an unprepared for event. It is almost sufficient to furnish matter for the Tragic Muse. My hopes lookforward - But, oh "Thou Friend of Sinners! I am bewildered, & in the dark, & sick at heart." Nov. 29"-- Into a cheery Saturday night. I revel in the cosy [cozy] evenings by the fire with Mother. Nov. 30"-- I felt so good this morning so well, so strong. +++ Mother & I walk & talk, & plan for our boy - & next year looks at us wistfully. Dec. 3"-- Mother sat up till three o'clock sewing for Dan. That worried me wide awake: & i thought, & thought & thought if I could give up Michigan next year & let Danny stay in school. Dec. 6"-- Into "[Bils] of Work" by F. B.! Don't look at me, or talk to me. I don't dare look at myself.Dec. 7"-73-- Into a rest spot. Days at home, lately, are so nice all of them! Dec. 11"-- Into whatever is the opposite of "outing": I suppose Patience Strong would call it inting! +++ I go into winter quarters in Greek! Sunday, Dec. 14"-- A day that came like a hope of heaven in a field of graves. Dec. 20"-- Into little done or thought, or dreamed. That last is much missed out of a day of mine. +++ I keep thinking of that pitiful little note from my boy - the sick. Dec. 22"-- I was mercifully spared from a dragging-on existence.Dec. 17"-- Mother has been gone three days. The fires have gone out only three times around. We have eaten starch for soda in our cakes only twice! Dec. 29"-- Into finding things to be glad about. Jan. 10 1874-- I live too fast - so much is certain. +++ i write Greek exercises, & get girls ready for examination & answer the door bell - & after my hands at last drop, & the light is out I want to think of our absent boy & pray & pray & pray for him - but I am too tired to lift my heart. This not the way I was made to live, & my release seems far-off.Jan. 11"-"74-- ++ I am glad of the Sunday - glad to be more & more ashamed "to speak of burdens to a Man on a Cross". O god! give me the life Thou didst give Thy Son! And home - all of it -makes me sorry. Jan. 15-- ++ A vacant day: not music, no dreams - no incense - only vague reality - a living on. +++ Jan. 19". +++ Dr French appears, armed & invincible. he says, "Don't stay here." My heart say "No - I won't." But I must wait. He only, of all others, says "Go to college." Every one else says no. Feb. 3"-- We have ups & downs since Dan's letter came. What he means isincomprehensible. We are left to worry about it - which we do in a manner never before attained. It was a mistake sending a boy down in our family. But we are learning so fast that the next generation may all be boys & we'll be ready for 'em. One can live & worry, too. the latter doesn't kill one - at least not me - any more than teaching with R,G.W.! Feb. 7"-'74-- A good word comes from the boy & our hearts take rest. It is a blessed giving from the King in answer to my feeble asking. He cannot fall away & be our disappointment - not as long as I bear him up to the everlasting Arms. Work makesme feel good today. It is so nice to work at home. Feb. 12" '74-- The bell rang a year ago this morning &, Fanny, do you remember that I promised never to make you walk up to answer its call another first day Feb. morning? This seems like one of the problems where the slate & pencil were taken away from me. The girls bring good cheer. There's a spirit of good times in Normal Hall. ++ I go home from it into a cloud that settles black & grim & sends tears to my eyes. Feb. 13"-- What can she do! I suppose this is one phase of the woman question! +++ The answer seems tobe to start a school, to be its first, its motive power, & its waste material. Feb. 19-'74 ++ I feel so unsatisfied & forlorn today. I can't find higher level & no pastures are green. +++ Feb. 20"-- What the final decision is. I don't know what the [number] of this final decison is. There have been so many since the first one I've lost track. Today proclaims we move. It makes me tired & sorry. +++ There have been cheery things today, & I have been in smoothe waters without much of any head wind. March 1"-- I take long looks at mother & the cosy [cozy] sitting room & envy & enjoy till I am dizzy withthe blessedness. Home never seemed as nice as it does this winter. Mar. 3"-'74-- +++ How proud I should be to have my boy turn out well! Now my heart calls for this as from the Father who had a son in this world & gave him power to overcome mar. 11"-- There are some of my girls that will never let life look very dark to me - some that are as priceless as these priceless days that are taking them from me. Mar. 12"-- I know one thing thro' the day-school. I know one thing thro' the night - Greek. +++ i can't erase mistakes & i am longing to right all things - to make myselffelt forever. ++ if I only could! I love my girls so! March 17"-'74-- I am in my martyr mood today: that is I go about kind o' pitiful & work with my teeth set & my hands holding on hard; but not a word do I utter! This well for those who learn of me. Mar. 19"-- I feel a good deal forlorn. I drag Fanny around. I make her teach & write & translate - & the child doesn't want to. Even Michigan is a terror to her. Mar. 20"-- I change my habits & become a guest. ++ E. has a pretty home. I envy girls with a father. ++ There is a plant here they call heartsease & I love it. Mar. 23"-'74-- ++ I'm tired of buying coats for a contrary naughty boy who will do what we don't want him to. Don't let me worry about it. ++ Let me grow patient & keep busy with living. Let me lay day - & lay down -& lay down - that I may take again. Deny - deny -deny- thyself. Mar. 24"-- In which I cannot face a frowning world. +++ Danny is head-strong & unreasonable, school stormy & discouraging, & my head fairly swims for want of rest - & all of these things move me. "Jesus - A Saviour" - I need nothing tonight so much as to be saved. Mar. 25"- There is a happiness in the bright morning when soul & body wake together strong for whatever comes.++ O if I can only keep tender, loving feelings & be patient nothing else shall worry me! Mar. 26"'74-- In which I am "pleasant to have about". The rarity of this accounts for its being recorded! The whole day has been like a hope of heaven. I love these new fresh days! Mar. 28"-- it seems so strange to feel the shackles of my work so unceasingly. I reproach myself for taking one moment to play. But rest is coming. April 1"-- In which i lift up mine eyes unto the hills & help cometh. There's spring enough to smell the sweet breath of pines, & see the water running, & watch the sunset glory on bare hill-tops. ++ I thought of Sue. She must bethe poetry of my life for there is no beautiful thing that does not bring me thoughts of her. All before this lay a day of hard work with a headache & thoughts roll & roll. April 7"-'74-- ++ School is such a treat to me when I feel like work - & I do today every inch of me. April 9"-- I go to prayermeeting & hear about living above the world. I know less about that than I once did. The work of this world - the hope of success draw me & chain me. ++ "Bringing every tho't into captivity to the obedience of Christ!" Ah, I have work to do-- There's mud & sow & spring is an ancient myth. April 10"-- ++ It's so nice with Mother today. What I shall do when I can'twork by her & talk to her next year I can't bring myself to think. April 14"-'74-- In which a wave of trouble rolls across my peaceful breast. It takes the form of a coal bill. I have been so in hopes those old bills could wait a little. I feel bound hand & foot this spring with Michigan before me. School partakes of the coal bill - so does the sitting-room & the coal stove! Not much "Broadfields" about me today! April 18"-- +++ Well - there's one thing - my salary is a comfort to other people! April 19"-- Heaven has sent us a reminder of itself in the day: a suggestion of what may be somewhere. I felt like resting my heart in thetenderness that is in the Almightiness. I asked for bread & he gave me a creed! never mind. The beauty of God & the glory are all about me. ++++ Mother & i have a nice visit. We talk of the time when Danny will be thro' school, & be a joy & comfort to us - when the old debts shall all be paid, & our new house shall be builded! April 23", '74-- +++ These are pleasant days to me after all; full of the work I live & the light of young faces & loving hearts. April 25"-- We are in another [woful] snow storm ++++ I suppose all we can do is to shovel paths & hope. +++ A letter from Cousin Mary lays hold of me: "You cannot do too much for your mother. If you could see things as Isee them now would love, trust & indulge her more than all the world." April 26"-'74-- The ninth regular snow-storm in the series was delivered today! ++ but there's cheer inside. I am very tender to Mother all day. Can anything ever take her from me? How weak I feel to keeps her! - & yet how strong! April 28"-- In which I don't know what to do with Fanny ++ If she had said anything today it would have been cross. ++ How thankful I am for the little sources of discipline. I wish I had enough more to make me behave. ++ O for power - for power to become a son of God! April 29"-- ++ I'm so cross I can'tstand it! +++ The mignonette, in the dear little bouquet that came yesterday, has helped. It holds me fast like soft hands touching mine in the dark. May3"-'74-- In which I consent to live. It begins to smile out of doors, & the desert places are going to blossom. +++ Mother & I chatter, chatter thro' the day. ++ I write to the boy, too: & I lie awake & think & pray that God will give his angels charge concerning him. He must ot break my Mother's heart. I think over & over what Mary wrote - "Trust her, love her, indulge her more than all the world." May 4"-- In which "heavy, heavy hangs over me." I go up the Monday steps slowly & not steadily. I ponder overin my heart the things R.G. said to me & I take fire. ++ I guess I shall stand it! I've had an extended course of standing it. +++ Comfort comes in the girls' prayermeeting. May 8"-'74-- ++ I think & think what we will all do & how we can get along: but nothing comes of it. In the meantime I write to Michigan & ask big questions. And so the days go. May 15"-- In which there is something new to be glad about - my copy of De Quincey. +++ There's an end to every trouble under the sun. Even examination papers will fade away. But there's no end to a joy. My books are durable riches. May 17"-- In which serene is thelight in the soft May weather." My heart rests & sings. ++ "O moment gone too soon & morning left behind!" The pale gray night comes down, & in the stillness I am left with God +++ He is nigh even at my doors. May 18"-'74-- In which one girl gets tired - too tired to think or be good. But as old Mr. ___ says: "It's a good deal to ask any body to be good all the time"! May 19"-- In which the things that make me tired are not less. "A lodge in some vast wilderness" has had a pleasant sound of late. +++ I am a living martyr to the present ideas of education: & I scold to myself about it which martyrs never do. May 24"-'74-- In which rest remaineth. ++ It has been a hard week. +++ My thoughts of heaven are alloyed with thoughts of work, & dreams that do not centre near the Throne. I never needed more a tidal wave to sweep over in my life & carry me out of myself. Will not God send it? Or must I always live this way? May 26"-- In which I am again in the crucible. === I go to bed but cannot sleep. Life touches me at so many points: & who is sufficient for these things? May 27"-- +++ My head fails me. Every little nerve sends up its feeble protest. But there is no help. I must workFanny still: & if she runs over & lets out cross things how shall we punish her? Ah, the punishment is swift & sure! There are nights of pain - unknown. June 2"-'74-- In which I find plenty to do. You may have heard something of this kind before! ++ This is Sir Launfal weather; & the nights are those in which Maud came into the garden. ++ Life is full of grammar & arithmetic & essays: but the blue is somewhere! June 6"-- In which my desires lie in the direction of a ride & not in the direction of Botany questions. But I do not take the ride & I do take the Botany. I can't set myself to work. I have to drag the child to it & pin her witha star. She has things on her mind & she is restless. June 9"-'74-- ++ School is pleasant. It's one of the days when I resolve to teach always. June 12"-- ++ I'm glad I'm just as I am - mostly. I'm so up when I am up & so down when I am down. But it's good to enjoy with all your might even tho' you suffer in the same way. June 29"-- In which our mode of life is primitive. ++ I wash windows & sweep, & contemplate my work as the gods eat ambrosia - in a fit of divine abstraction. ++ My greatest housewifely accomplishment consists in being able to be here washing windows, & being off somewhere else at the same time - in fingering & thinking at opposite ends. July 1"-'74-- In which chaos is no more. One only needs to move to be reminded of the creation. Cohoes-July 13"-- I am full of the summer pleasantness, & a quiet, restful content. I have a feeling as if I had just been converted: & what is that like but opening tired eyes & seeing the "place prepared" for the first time. July 17"-- In which I am in the middle of the pasture, & do not even put my head over the fence. July 21"-- In which courage predominates. She kind that works & will not stop - that dodges pain - &will not worry. Aug. 1"-'74-- In which August drips in. Greek & I are getting on very good terms now. +++ I don't jump around at my work & sing: I creep when I'm up & sit down pretty often. +++ The moment D. leaves me nights I worry & I worry until he comes in. It makes me feel better, little book, to tell you about it. If I could only look on & see him safe-! Aug. 5"-- In which my boy is good to me & shows me his best in our quiet talk. Almost every summer has had in it some intense longing which has been put into words only for God's ear. This time it is all for my boy - the pain & longing. God is God -"To doubt is still disloyalty". My neuralgia is assuming painful proportions. I am found pitying myself. Aug. 9"-'74-- In which it might have been glad & heartsome. That is hasn't been makes me toss & toss. buy why do I chronicle my tossings as if they were good things to keep? As if in God's world the aches & sorries did not perish & the bright things only live on? God tells us so much about blotting out. I sat up stairs a good while & the quiet made me over. Aug. 10"-- Everything at home has taken on the most uncomforting aspect. I do so want Mother to be at least a little happy: & I think &think & plan & plan - but the night takes it all up away from me. Aug. 15"-'74-- In which its time Sunday came. I love the Sundays - look, long, wait for them - most of all when I am with Mother. I keep in my heart most lovingly the memory of our Castleton Sundays. They'll be dearer than ever when the little mother is gone. What made me think of this? It must be because she is so pale & tired today. Aug. 17"-- In which I make great efforts to be a hero. My most desperate attempts have been in two directions - to study some, & to sit up straight & still & bear the toothache. I've a great desire to see someone who achieved heroism by this method. I'd like also to knowif two of their teeth ached. +++ The little Mother is better. Her face brightens & she is her own dear little self again - our everyday hero. Aug. 19"-'74-- After a wilderness I come upon a goodly heritage. I am requested to be in Castleton at one & "take charge of the Normal School". +++ I hasten to order me a hat, & walk as the head of a Normal School would be expected to walk: & I dream as girls dream. Forgive my weakness! Mother comes home springing. Castleton - Aug. 22"-- In which I am fully instructed as to the kind of charge I am to take of the Normal School. My reception at Castleton partakes of warmth: I am waited uponby the dignitaries of the town, & compose myself to a placid benignity in the hotel parlor. Developments are not slow: i soon see that taking charge does not mean taking charge at all. What I think of it will not now be recorded. In the meantime observe my benign placidity. Aug. 23"'74-- In which He strengthens my heart. I have so dreaded this Sunday without the little Mother. God has not let me miss Him, too. +++ I am ready to take the place I did not choose - to be subordinated & humiliated if it be His appointing. Aug. 24"-- I go to the task of filling up the Normal School with a vanishingcourage. Lilly C. comes & takes me to ride - carries me off to reverie & dreams. I do not come back as I went. I am so like a child about going into the deeps of a joy; & so not like a child in my efforts to rise above the heights a a sorrow. Aug. 25"-'74-- In which they sent Mr. Sherman to talk to me. It is the old story that is told to girls & women as they learn with every struggle that they contend with men. A college boy, because he is a boy, is preferred, without experience or years: & the woman is passed by. Ah! don't I know how it feels. A man, they tell me, "will give the school more of a name." Andso the letter is already on its way that recommends Mr. Hyde to the principalship of the Normal School; & I, who have loved it so, & worked for it so long am out of sight. The whole of me says, as I toss 7 toss, "I will not stay." Aug. 26"-74-- In which I look for God's answer in a calm that is strange & welcome. The drawing away of the profs in Castleton means, does it not? that I shall realized my dearly-loved purpose & see Michigan. Aug. 28"-- In which there is a high tide & low tide. ++ I find myself the joyful recipient of a letter or two stating the certain coming of a student or two;& in the same mail I find myself the woe-begone recipient of other letters stating the certain staying away of a student or two.! ++++ R.G. Williams is vanished from my horizon! I have lived to see this day! Aug. 30"-'74-- A day of peace in country places. +++ Tonight I could pray for my boy & it has seemed sure, so sure, that he should be preserved from evil, for my faith grows stronger & stronger. Sept. 1"-- In which the tendencies are domestic. I sit on the upper piazza & aspire to make good sheets! +++ The day is full of the thoughts that almost always come with stitches. Someof them are restless; but those that stay are calm & full of courage. I feel so sure that the best shall be for me & mine. Sept. 4"-74-- In which I am at the height of all dreariness. ++ Which means that the Normal School is not filling by tens & dozens. ++ How am I to get up any spirit? I must find a way out of this. Come-arouse! The generations are calling & you are not a hero! sept. 6"-- In which there comes a growing comfort & a Sabbath peace. I wish I could make myself feel something away down deep - as deep as I ever feel. What is going to come upon me to bring me out of this valley?Sept. 10"-'74-- +++ The Board has met & it is done. E.J. Hyde is principal. God is plainly calling me to do a hard thing - To stay here & take the lower place - to stand here in the dark & suffer! Sept. 13"-- In which I am quiet a few minutes. How well for me it is! Anybody like me ought to be quiet a great many minutes: but my life spins on ++ while all the time I am wishing so still to myself that I had a little home & my work could lie inside of it. +++ I take all my steps in a maze - for where do they lead? Sept. 21"-- +++ I come back from the dear little home-visit with the firm purpose of making all the peoplepossible glad that I am to live among them! Sept. 24"-'74-- In which my hands are unequal to their burdens. Oct. 3"-- In which the King comes to his own. ++ It seemed God's message when the doctor came & took us up to the lake & among the woods & hills. ++ Was I ever known to forget my rides -- they form epochs! Oct. 5"-- ++ This girl is a mystery unto herself. She might be always kind, tender-hearted, forgiving - but she is far from it. O-God help her! Oct. 7" +++ Work is a delightful solace tho' I can't talk & explain. I sit in a grim silence which means only sorrow.Oct. 9"-74-- In which the evening is long & quiet to myself alone - one of my lovely times when I can bear to look out upon things as they are & not lose heart Oct 11"-- In which the day is delighted in ++++ It is easy to be homesick but I won't let me. ++ Everything cosy [cozy], even a cosy [cozy] thought, is a comfort - & I find a few. Oct. 12"-- ++ My courage is slowly coming back, as the old work is taken up & the put-away things are taken out. How funny all my dreams see - I who was to have been at Michigan! Oct. 13"-- ++ A metamorphosis going on. A cross girl is to be fixed over into a sunny girl. Come & see!Oct. 14"-74 ++++ The girl wakes & clings - oh, how she clings! - to the hand held out to her - lest a cross word come - a heartless word - God help her! I think the struggle going on down here in the dark is part of the battle for Christ. I can feel Him so much nearer since the conflict began. Nov. 2"-- In which the leaves go & the comforts begin to take their place. Nov. 3"-- In which the girl wonders how so many happy things could come at once. Nov. 4"-- In which mine is the deep joy, the unspoken fervor the sacred fury of the fight! This is one of the days when the girl likes to talk to herself - & to God. What she says in those still moments,let us hope will make her what she finds it so hard to be. Nov. 11"-'74 +++ I am clasped in the cold arms of Duty! This is why I am not at Michigan. You find me a favorite phantom chased & not graceful Sophomore. I am learning - how slowly! - not to expect all things to move for one girl. Nov. 17" ++++ I've not watched this girl today & I feel - as if it would never be helped. Do I not know the sunless depths that come after such a day? Am I never to be helped? Or must I be shown & shown & shown that without Him I can do nothing? Nov. 24"-74-- +++ There's a girl here that's wanting to go home. Some days she never hears the cars : today every car-ring goes thro' her. +++ I don't believe she is sorry down in her heart for this hard day. The pain is so sweet - the help so precious. +++ The home letter teases the child to come. Danny, bless the loving boy-heart! - sends dear words to me. Nov. 25"-- In which this looks pretty hard. ++ The joy that I can do it makes my face bright as I kiss the girls off & watch the trains go. How good life is even such times! Dec. 2"-- In which I make the world a little brighter for some people. +++ I take some time tobewail that I have downs as well as ups. This is also a source of regret to those who have to do with me! I stand the girl up straight & say, "Are you comfortable to have about? Then I'll know how much of a Christian you are." +++ I tell you what you may believe it or not but I'm good today. I've embraced Miss W. 1 I try to radiate geography & make the highways of grammar & arithmetic glorious. Hard job! Dec. 5"-74-- in which it's about so! Dec. 16"-- in which I come to a standstill. Dec. 19"-- in which I embrace my Mother & enter into rest. +Dec. 27"-- In which I come to a great calm.Jan. 8-/75-- Gives me the idea! I comprehend at once about what I've got to come to. I can get a good deal in a taste! All the joy there is in holding a girl down tight & making her stay is mine to the full. How thankful I ought to be for blessings like these! Jan 26"-- Shows me prospects of continued discipline. I fight at the very thought. I raise up an armed insurrection in my heart : but there's nothing to do but quell it & meet my fate. Jan. 29"-- Has to go chasing about for endurance. It is a pitiable sight. One can't gaze upon martyrs every day. Jan. 30"-/75-- Gets where the Dark is. These are cheering pages. What an addition they would be to the literature of the desponding! Such chroniclings of love rising triumphant over frowning worlds - of a brave will conquering & defying fate - of a patience that is not afraid to walk alone! Let the heroic record stand for "some forlorn & shipwrecked brother," +++ I go sorrowing these days for appreciation. Isn't this high moral courage? Feb. 2"-- Brights & darks alternate. Anything like a bright even with a dark tied to it comes as hopeful as the sounding tread of a victorious army to the waiting prisoners in the city!Feb. 3"-75-- Floats me about - My catch words do not of late convey any idea of fixedness. I am a spar floating, or a spindle whirling, or a speck wherving, or a piece of endurance chasing about. Feb. 12"-- Pushes into worries. The way there is so plain that I never lose the path. Feb. 16-- The girl thinks that she will do a great deal but she doesn't - she worries. She sees herself in the midst of things she ought to help: & some of them she does help - & the rest torture her. Feb. 19-- Do take a chair! That's the way people talk to you when your back aches. People whose backs never ache lay out the straight & narrow path.Mar. 4-/75-- I was glad to creep under the shadow of a trouble greater than mine. Glad to think of the eternal peace into which another soul has drifted. Mar. 21"-- Sunday - strengthens my heart. I am always so glad to see the Sundays come: & the Sundays here this year have been particularly dear & holy to me. Mar. 28-- Sunday - makes me fitter to live. ++ At church the flowers told us of resurrection & the sunshine made us glad. Mr. __ had caught none of the Easter joy. He threw his sermon at us, fiercely. April 2"-- All the melancholy verses of the forlorn poetswould apply. Minor strains wail through the rain. I grow & increase in ability to worry. What becomes of my religion such days as these? Cohoes - April 3"-75-- Is ready for a hallelujah or two! Delectable mountains have risen between yesterday's rain & today's clear blue, as I rush towards home & the little mother waiting on the hill. April 4"-- Being allowed to wake up in a christian manner is an ecstasy I had almost forgotten. I have been rung up so long! I never felt so tired before.Castleton - April 26"-/75 It looks as if there were a demand just now for a heart for any fate! I'm not on a quest for the immortal glory part of anything. To see me mount heights (stairs especially) would give you the most painful sensations. +++ I crawl on - & doze & doze when I can - & call it getting along. "Lift up your eyes & see!" April 30" - So glad not to have a headache. So glad to go into the schoolroom & find so much work waiting for me. I had thought for a little while that I could never go into the schoolroom again.May 13"-75. Something lovely & new is being done out of doors every day. It rests me so - I can teach 7 teach & not get tired a bit. It makes me just as happy in my work as I can be. The poetry of the May weather steals in & makes rhyme even out being rung up, rung down, rung out, rung in. June 21"-- Dreams of a better world. Anybody could with a lap full of essays. I know of nothing more likely to awaken thought of a heaven for you & a heaven for me! "How do you do it?" says Ignorance. "Why, re-write them, stupid!"June 24"-/75-- You'd better be careful, Fannie. There's always somebody near enough to get a part of your shadows. June 29" - Cohoes - The home door swings wide for me. God keeps me still a mother to be glad I came! July 1"-- Many of the interesting details which have hitherto been all-absorbing to this journalist will appear no more. There will be no more mention of bells or of anything that may, can, must, might, could, would or should be done. There will be only resting & dreaming with no money in it anywhere! I want it under-stood that I want my dreams aerial, etherial [sic] - that kind. July 3-/75-- I delight to record a visit with my mother & her mother in the open door. This is a good world as long as the mothers stay in it. July 5"-- Mother's short cake roused all our slumbering patriotism. We sat & loved the country where such berries could grow. July 17"- Crawford - ++ I've left the hard part for this last little corner. A little place is big enough to fret in. I've come to a standstill. But the Lord knows what to do with me. I am trusting a little.July 18"-/75--Knows how His love went before me each day. It came with all its beauty giving no sign. Night ended in day while yet tired eyelids lay upon tired eyes. July 23"-- My early ride was perfection itself. Such an air as I have not breathed since I left heaven, long ago. July 25"--Sunday - Lives in sunlight. Aug. 3"-- Lives in a What shall I do? +++ Everyday it seems harder to go anywhere & leave Mother. Weak-hearted girl! But she does love Mother so! [O years]! speak tonight. Open just a little way & tell me things.Aug. 4"/75-- Things look better to me today - brighter. As if I could do things - sometime. As if mother should have a quiet, happy old age. Aug. 9"-- Brings so much. ++ I was so happy I woke up in the night to think about it. I felt so good all day. Nothing could mar it. Aug. 19"-- Cohoes - Horrifies me! This page is for the desponding. It starts out as if it might be so bracing. +++ Yes, it comes over me - the darkness & hopelessness of things. Looking forward makes my heart sink, & I seem not to touch the solid earth. Why I never can go & feel like this. I never felt so before.Aug. 22"-/75-- Has a hope in it - that the head will be better tomorrow. +++ Talks at home have been more cheerful. It looks a little as if it would not seem quite so dreadful to go away. Taking up a new life in a new place, among indifferent faces sets me to hunting up all my courage, just to think of it. Aug. 29"-- [Woos] me away from life's tangles & perversities. It seems easy for such things to heap up, & where the biggest heap is you'll see me standing round most generally!Aug. 30"-/75-- I got up with the spirit of the morning in me, & everything that came near me touched some happy spring. Sept. 7"--the part of me that tosses & dreads things finds this a shut-up summer. Sometimes it will not rest on the promises that lie like solid rock under my life. It wonders if the time for sacrifice is come - if the taking what I so wish & yet dread to take is God's will for me - It wonders if anybody at home must give up one little hope or joy to give me this. Sept. 8"-- Keeps me pondering. These are bright days. Whowould think that in such days anyone would flounder in the dark asking questions. But I know who does. Sept. 11"-- Waxes not valiant. ++ It took me way out of myself to watch the hills tonight. I realized then that there was a shadow to lift. Such a dreary miserable sickness these days. Next week I must be better. It can't last always. There's been good cheer at home today. Sept. 16"-- Looks forward too much - & back plenty enough. What I fail in is "lending a hand". I look enough to supply all the demands. +++ Why-how can I make you know how dreadful going away looks to me! Sept. 23"-- Fixes clouds in the sky. It seems as if they were fixed to stay - as if it would never be bright & glad in my world again. ++ I can't say, "Not as I will." I hold up defiant hands at fate. I can be a weak little girl & cry & cry & cry. I keep thinking "I will be well - I must go." Have I not asked God all summer to tell me what is best?Sept. 24"-75--Lets the sun shine in. I kept looking to the hills all day & thinking how lovely it was. ++ Today my heart doesn't say "I will go" - it just waits. sept. 25"-- Stands in the dark & suffers. +++ The doctor has been seen - we know now. The day was so bright it almost seemed as if I couldn't ask anything but what I should have. Not so. It gives not & it takes. It falls upon me. Be He knows - that God for that. Sept. 26" - Sunday - All alone with the day & the pain. Sept. 29"-- Has a little help in it. In any trouble howI dread the first waking thoughts - those that come before we are wholly ourselves to face things & get courage together. Oct. 3"-/75. I noticed how bright everything was this morning because I wanted it so. +++ A long ride up the hill & drearier thoughts than I shall ever tell you or any one. I go off to bed alone with them. Oct. 4"-- Anybody would think I might revolve a little even on a creaking axis : but there wasn't any such thing done. I decide to think today & achieve tomorrow. Oct. 9"-- Has a ring of triumph in it. ++ God's great sunrisehasn't found me out but one of the best little earthly ones has. Oct. 13"-/75-- I pray so to get better - to be well. I will be so careful of the child if she will only get so she can walk once more. It is so hard to sit still these days & wait. But His grace is near. Oct. 14"-- Looks out for courage. Do you think it failed to come. It did not - it is there - ready - sure. +++ I am really getting better - O am I not? Isn't something the least little bit better? I get so sure of it - I feel way up. Oct. 17"-/75. +++ It makes me wish for the work - some work - any work. O God! anything but this! Nov. 14"-- Tosses - as it did one day before. +++ There's nothing down-hearted in the talk & I keep where Mother & the children are a great deal. When I do go off by myself the white chrysanthemums make me cry. The little thoughts that come of mother are so dear & close. In my thought of what I am to do or be I find myself in a perfect struggle. I can feel my heart beat as I try to decide which way is best - as I try to know just what God means for me. I try to see His way -but, oh, I so want His way & mine to be the same. Mother doesn't say much - O if I only knew what to do! Oct. 15"-/74-- ++ I go down to River St for Agnes - my one sister. I feel kind of sorry for this child as she trudges along, choking back the tears, as she thinks how hard it is to plan to go to Smith College - & how much she wants to do for Mother & the children. Well - well - we won't feel sorry. We'll just work all we can & trust God for the rest. Nov. 16"-- It's a pull & haul day. +++ I hate to have Mother get tired. I would so love to have a home for herfree from all this - just as some mothers have it. Nov. 22"-/75-- I go down to the doctor's & come back on wings. He says I am better - that I may get well. What could I hear that would be like this to me? Nov. 25"-- Thanksgiving - "Rejoice in hope." The girl that was down yesterday, down at the bottom of the hill where it is lonely, lonely, is way up today. I was so glad all day just be at home. Nov. 27"-- Mr. Johnson's words to Gertie about Vassar for me seem like an answer straight from God. I have so prayed that if there was any other way He wouldmake it known. Nov. 28"-/75-- ++ I think of Vassar & think, & think, & wonder if it is for me. Wonder what God's answer will be. Dec. 2"-- Brings the answer! I believe it is from God -- I believe I shall go. I get all my Latin books out & begin to climb the mountain is before me. Dec. 3-- Associates itself with dark closets. This is where I get some days & peep out on life thro' chinks. Dec. 10"-- A little better - a little brighter - but so tired! How could she study with the pain & the restlessness? +++ I can't bear lately to think how much I love mymother. Oh how close they lie - the tenderness & the pain! Dec. 11"-75-- "Let me hide myself in Thee!" Dec. 12"-- Gives me rest - not because I am worthy, but because He is good. Dec. 18"-- Insists on being an anniversary! +++ I feel stronger today & very hopeful. 1876 Jan. 6"-- A day when the steps turn away from home & toward a new unknown. One of the solemn days when we touch reverently all the little things that we must leave. +++ The last rolling away - the space between & the beginning of the great loneliness that already threatens to swallow meup. The ride up the hill to Vassar - the first look at its walls in the moonlight! Jan. 8-'76-- Will I go & be Lady Principal of Waynesburg College? says my letter. We will see. Jan. 10"-- A day when things don't begin. It takes an interminable length of time to get planted here. One has to be laid above ground sever days. +++ Jan. 14"-- ++ When I think of where I am & how I came here & what I have the chance to do my heart grows so warm, so glad that I know I can bear anything. +++Jan. 19"/76-Vassar-- A day when I lived tho' it! ++++ I feel a little fresh & good with the first of things: but on into the day I get to wondering what is to become of me. Jan. 20"-- A day when I stand like one bewildered. As given below: I want that position on Waynesburg. I just do. I want the course here - I just do. I don't know what to do - I just don't. ++ Jane. 22"-- ++ For me, the hermit, there was plough boy's work without the plough-boy's whistle. ++ Five pages of Cicero's first Oration, interrupted with flashes of Waynesburg. A solitary walk with a storm threatening, & my perplexities also threatening. Never mind. When I am oppressed Hewill undertake for me. +++ Jan. 26"-/76-Vassar-- A day when my career continues to be spectre-like. To stop & think about it, which we never get time to do here, it is easy to appreciate the feelings of a phantom, gliding thro' these halls & sailing around these woods! Never to be thought about, or missed, or noticed! ++++ Jan 27"-- A day when I will be glad anyway! +++ Jan. 28"-- To remove my spectre habiliments & find somebody that wants to talk to me because they do & not because I am alone, or a stranger, or woe-begone, is now the desire of my heart! +++Feb. 1"-/76-V/C.-- A day when there's a great flutter of things. Things here means heart. Put in the plural because I have a great many of them & all fluttering. +++ Feb. 22"-- A day when I sould keep his memory green! +++ God help me to fulfill in my life the best, the noblest wishes of the dead father, & care always for the one boy he fain would have taken with him! ++++ Feb. 25"-- +++ Worst siege yet encountered in V.C. Miserable floundering in Greek, & another squelch in Horace. I do get up stairs at last. Cry it out! +++ A day without a smile from any human being: & a long stretch of hard work without a letter. Vassar - Mch 5-76 +++ had my everyday siege of homesickness - the awful sort. No dear little Mother to come in. ++ Why can't I have her a few minutes? +++ Mch 24"-- Not a day to be blue in. Everything above & around laughed & shouted or was just going to. +++ Greek & dinner - neither in any demand by yours truly. A feeble attempt to walk. Abandoned! No more attempts to chronicle except the scramble to live tho' the President's prayer. April 4"-- ++ A great many bodies are packing. Found Laura Skinner at it & ventured to say "What does this mean?" "It means 'Exit Skinner'", quoth she. ++++April 13" '76 - Cohoes-- Here's a girl no good to anybody, wriggling this way 7 that under excess of aches & ills +++ looking forward to day after day just like this, pitiless & grim. What a queer standstill I've come to! Let's talk about the lilies in the window How they grow; & the pin, how fast it is opening to the light-- & the baby at the neighbor's window-- & Grandma so safely past the din & the struggle-- & of a sure safe time past all this weariness. No - it isn't for nothing that we hope & dream. April 17"-- ++ How comfortable that big rocking chair is with the huge pillows. This is the bestlife & the world can do for me now. The best I can do for me now. The best I can do for myself is to wait in patience for the sunshine to come back. April 19",/76 - Cohoes-- A day when the story reads not a bit as I had written the plot! There's just about as much of the awfulness of living on as there was when I came home - & I ought to be in V.C. this very day. +++ The doctor leaves some miserable little concoctions, vile & ineffectual, & says I'm pretty bad off. No, I aint neither! There's fifty years in me yet - good solid ones too! Cohoes - April 20"-76-- A day when I have "hurries to go". There are all beginning down there, & I'm up here fenced in. +++++ Sunday-April 2[5]"-- +++ It seems a myth to me that I ever got up Sunday morning & walked down to church - ever got up at all in fact. Little snatches of minutes between the pain - these take the place of all larger ambitions. ++++ April 24"-- It's surprising how little I can get her to caring. Dying or coming back to life - it seems all one to me +++ April 25"-- ++ The nights are very long. The great thoughts - the thoughts that have carried methro' so many unfilled hours - will not come to help me. But God's promises come & lift my heart up into the blessed places. +++ April 26",/76-- +++ How could I love my home more than I do? If God will only let me be well again - well enough to work! But I lie here waiting. I may be taken & these left. ++ "O God our help in ages past - Our hope for years to come!" April 27"-- +++ I get more & more glad of little things: a little brightness - a little ease from pain - a scrap from out of doors - all these have it in them to bless me. As my horizon narrows - as Isee this denied on one hand, and that taken away on the other, I stop resisting, & cease to demand. ++ Just as if at first we should want all outdoors & should say at last, "If I can only have this one green plant in my window!" Vassar-May 17"-'76-- Given a problem to work upon: To want to do a great deal - wonderful things - to be set in a place where everybody is driving ahead & turning out wonders - & then be forbidden to exert yourself under penalty of forfeiting forever all you want to do & be - & then be patient & unworn & light-hearted! ++++Vassar - June 1"-76-- Light & beauty enough out doors to fill us, satisfy us - if we would be good & rest in it. ++ I feel stronger to do & bear, today. O, if I could only walk! June 5"-- Dug a little at Greek with Laura. The Greek words took it upon themselves to be clothed in unsearchable forms & Laura says, "Lets hang ourselves!" ++++ June 10"-- Sprang to my feet with a delicious sense of joy in the early morning - of being glad I'm here - of an assurrance [sic] in my heart that my steps are ordered by the Lord & a determination that I won't be troubled. ++++Cranford-July 8"'76-- ++ I just love Susie, & it makes me happy as I need to be. Her home is beautiful to me - & someway i seem to breathe only when she is looking at me. ++ Aug. 30" ++ I am in the delicious dream of a may-be college. Dare I try it? I am asking God. His plan for me is larger, nobler than mine. Vassar-Sept. 29'-- +++ I know what one week of Trig. is. Fifteen more come up from the statistical corner of me - don't say grimly! You can't afford to be grim - 15 weeks. It is Friday - a breathing-space let down. It's like prairie-land between Fri. 11:50, & Mon. 8:15 - a smoothgreen stretch all level! Huldah keeps up an intermittent dig - that is her measure of prairie-land & hill-regions. Polly's digs lie in the last five minutes before she goes to something. Sept. 30"-76-- ++ Don't know who is steeped in homesickness! Oct. 10"-- +++ I got up this morning wishing I didn't have to. More cold, more strain, more something to make me an exact misery. ++ Laura lets me lie still & says nonsense rhymes to me whereat I rejoice. Laura's new word is "whaeck"! Oct. 11"-- More to get up for - so it sort of somehow seemed. This suggests Prof. Hinkel's[Greek letters]- & also especially those! We have actually left Chap. I in Herodotus. There is every indication of our making a continuing city of Chap. II. "Come up & gaze upon the felicities of cot-beds". I go. "This was the out-cropping of our brains", explained Laura. Oct. 13"-/76-- I come to it aching - I got tired - the big kind - over my rally in cosines. ++ The little Greek man says, "I will explain & then we will go on". So we sit & are poured into. It's a way he has. Huldah get a letter & goes around saying, "Poor Aunt Mag! poor Aunt Mag isdead." Somebody's always dead in the letters Huldah gets. Polly's letter makes her shout. It comes pealing forth from the bed-room & I take a new lease of life. Blessed Polly! +++ Oct. 16"/76-- A sort of clear grit morning. It is not brilliancy I astonish people with in Trig. - nor brevity. My demonstration only covers one wing of the college! +++++ Oct. 20"-- I am tired out trying to make my girl attend to things today. I had to make her get up in the first place - tendencies all against me. Then she staid up, in a dreadful poking way,keeping me pushing her up to this & steeling her against that: but now I've comforted her with the assurance that today is a kind of exception & tomorrow she won't ache in so many places. ++ O - one of my low-down days! Nov. 3",/76 - Vassar-- A sort of uplifting all thro'. I pray for days like this - ready for anything - glad in what is. Nov. 4"-- My birthday & how bright it was! ++ I had to be glad - there must be no dark guesses, no restlessness. There was help to see "the real whole best." "God is known in her palaces for a refuge."Nov. 5"/76 - Vassar - Sunday & I have lots of time to think how many days it is before I go home. ++ I believe if there was only a day between me & Mother I should think that day would never end. I am sure I never wanted home so - or tossed so to see it. Nov. 9"-- Could I get up? could I stay up? Rather singular questions from a girl who has Senior Greek & Sophomore Latin on her hands! There was a great mustering of forces: every available one was summoned, & I did squeeze through the day some how. +++ I have seen Dr. Webster. She makes no mention of death's door, but speaks of a time when I shall be well - bless her!Nov. 15"/76 - V.C.-- Huldah says that in the Bates Mitchell's class they are all "revolving around the marks." Heaven help them! Dec. 19" - Cohoes-- A good deal to it that wasn't consoling. I come home to add to Mother's troubles &, as far as I can see, to be of not the slightest use to any body. +++ Miss -- comes in like a fresh morning breeze. I'm so devoutly thankful to be relieved of my thoughts for an hour or so. Dec. 23"-- +++ I wish very much for the use of my feet. Have longings for the pretty shop windows, & the people withbundles & pleasant secrets to keep; want to see the cutters skip along; want to get stirred up. Instead of that I am a city set on a hill. But Aggie brings some of the good cheer home : there's almost always a next best. +++ Dec. 27"/76-Cohoes +++ D. brings up two tickets for the concert. "Can Fanny go?" It has not yet got fully settled here that "Fanny" can't "go" - can't ever go. She say "No - ask Emma." +++ Go! isn't it one of the nights when she would scream if she could go!1877. Jan. 1"--- I've found out how the courage of one is the courage of the souls that live near it: that good cheer is nothing short of an atmosphere: and even of a little patience the world has need! ++++ The worries that we began last year with are most of them here to start out with us again. +++ But I am a little surer that the storms are in the lower strata. We shall get above them by and by. I have reason to be more sure of a few things than I was a year ago. "I tell you that One knocked while it was dark."Jan. 2",'77--- The spell of silence is broken at last. Somebody has sent me a written communication. Huldah is noted for breaking silences. It is her voice, grim and inauspicious, that comes summarily into dark mornings : her alarm is that it is six and something, and I am too far gone to contest the point - usually. ++++ Jan. 3" ++ My letter from __ makes me feel rich - well-to=do in the world. I won't say that there were any bluish tendencies for her to counteract, but still I view her eight pages in the light of a "marcy".Jan. 6:, '77--- D. says, he starts to go, "Oh, I forgot!" and hands me - why, it was one of the loveliest things - L.s letter! What a new face everything wears for me. Jan. 10"--- V.C. and no. 11,d once more enfold me. Polly and the girls come at me. And - well, there's an example in Trig. for tomorrow with two solutions and six answers! Ye fates! I spend silent time with L. - bless her! Jan. 14"-- A severe talk on the married state - Parlor 12 all there. L. comes in for the woful [sic] summing up -- "It's a wuzzly world!" L. thinks there area few happy marriages - not many, perhaps, but a few! H. sets her foot down - "None - whatever!" We feel the projection of the great circle of hopelessness crossing our celestial equator. We turn reverently to the Greek of Matthew. There's no hopelessness there - no dragging down sensations. "Come to me" it says. Well - we are tired children, and He knows. Jan. 15",'77-- Head streaks of disaster in it. But then - why should you sing, "Increase my courage, Lord" if there's never anything going to happen to make courage, and lots of it, the thing to have?You were torn up by the roots when you got out of bed this morning, and you lay around on top all day. +++ It's L. who packs up 82 and brings it down stairs for my present comfort. Jan. 16", '77-- We aren't going to have any mournfulness about this business. You've got it on hand and we see you wriggling it through. Trot right along. You stand up before Prof. B. gladiator-fashion, and impress her with the fact that you embraced a hot water bottle last night and not Trig.-aches, and not cosines. She doesn't act as if you were confessing incendiarism to her, and you sit down,meekly, as is your wont. You persevere through half a chapter of "thought-weighted Thucydides" with L. and then her good angel comes down and enlivens the world by Keeping you up from tea, spreading for you a famous little supper in 82, and making you feel the blessedness there is in love. Jan. 24","77-- To be sure you didn't have your Trig. but as L. says, "That's nothing!" "Same problem for tomorrow," says the sharp-eyed Professor in drab. "You may get it." Another little supper with L. in 82. You peep into "Sights & Insights" while she lays the cloth and brings out the cunninglittle cups. She buzzes about & you call it "being out to tea", and almost forget you are a Sophomore with aspirations. Jan. 15, 1877-- For steady help from outside give me a day of sunshine. It is impossible to feel that you are fighting single-handed as long as there is sunlight that will not forsake you. ++++ There are lots of things left over that you wanted to do. Left over for when? We shall see. Meantime we are glad - glad for life just as it is this minute. Jan. 27".-- Undermining forces are at work again. You've heard about such days before.this week, though it ends with full noon, has had its hard places : but which one would I have had left out if I could? "Until He says 'Come up higher', let us be content at the foot of the board." Feb. 2", 1877-- For one day freedom from that pain has not left you for weeks before, and that has made everything you did so hard. You almost know, for a little breath, what the better day will be. Feb. 4"--"It's a lovely day, Fanny. Wish you could go to walk." Have not yet attained to any such paradise. Yet nights I dream of walking. +++ "Edith isgoing to read some of Hale's Christmas stories - don't you want to come up?" Inclination wanted props. Supplied by the maiden who wanted to know - "a maiden who wanted to know - "a very young Freshman". Feb. 5", 1877.-- A review of Herodotus is about to be entered upon. I like this way of taking it - viz. me on the bed, pillowed. L. in a chair, with dic. "Curtins" and most of it in mind, gives me exact meanings and optatives "with and without ar". I, purely receptive. Then we have crackers, and beff-tea, and Jam up in her room, and I am spared the dining-room. ++ Great uncomfort-ableness today. If I only could feel better! "Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me!" Feb. 8",/77-- Trig is over & gone. The examination did not bear as strong a resemblance to "the Assyrian" that "came down" as we had darkly pictured, though there was a slight disproportion between the number of questions and the number of minutes. ++++ How we've laughed today! but tonight we sit very still. To think that this was coming! Sunday, Feb. 11"-- The first thing was the breath of the flowers. Then the dawning sense that this wasthe last day - that the little Greek books lying in the window meant nothing any more. i got up with my trouble and went out where the girls were. Everything has been very sweet all day. My comfort has been thought of and thought of till I am strangely confused at being so cared for. ++ To see the day die over Sunset Hill and know it is the last time for weeks 7 weeks--! Feb. 12"-/77. +++ The sight of the little Greek books in the window, where we left them last Thursday, is more than I can bear. When I am bravest I can't look at that window. +++ It's all over now. I see them waving to mefrom the platform - my train moving slowly away. One of the hard times, Frances - one of the very hard times. "O Lord! only to be made like Thee in Thy great love!" Home - where are those who care also - who care most! Feb. 14", 1877-- Last night I woke in the night and heard Mother praying. It went to my heart and left the sorest kind of an ache there. How can I die when I know she wants me like this! If she were anywhere - anywhere in this wide earth and wanted me I would go. But how can I if it is that River I must cross? Bit it isGod she is talking to. Her cause is safe with Him. Feb. 15", 1877. "Faint yet pursuing" - to have this said of you because you washed a handful of dishes! Think of coming to this! Feb. 16"-- Yes'm. I keep very very still. These are not days for talking. I would not like to write what I am living. It is all too solemn, and I shall remember it all. It is not such days as these that we forget. Feb. 17".-- Saturday night - in the harbor, I. My boat rocks gently as the night comes down. There are cities full of busy people buying & selling; but I seemout of it all - with the feeling of one who is to be forever out of it. "Under His wings thou art come to trust!" Feb. 19", 1877.-- I feel as if I were following somebody over a thorny path between tall hedge-rows - and yet I know that it is not a stranger that I follow. Albany, Feb. 20"-- +++ I watched the little mother's gray shawl and black dress and little bonnet out of sight. I think after that I had the heartache. Tonight it seems as if there could be nothing grander than to have, like the Lord Jesus, power to heal such trouble as mine. Show less

Creator

Notman, William

Date

18--

Creator

Vassar, Matthew, 1792-1868

Date

August 2, 1867

Text

August 2d 1867 Doct. Nathan Bishop L.L.D My dear Sir Some time ago I called your attention as Chairman of the Ex. Board of Trustees of " Vassar College " to a suggestion made by me of the propriety of the latter furnishing at their own expense thier respective half lenght potraits for to be hung up in the Art-Gal- lery, and more especialy do I desire this in as much as my Likeness in Oil & soon will be added the Marble Bust, and then perhaps a Bronse Statute,—a lavish ex-... Show moreAugust 2d 1867 Doct. Nathan Bishop L.L.D My dear Sir Some time ago I called your attention as Chairman of the Ex. Board of Trustees of " Vassar College " to a suggestion made by me of the propriety of the latter furnishing at their own expense thier respective half lenght potraits for to be hung up in the Art-Gal- lery, and more especialy do I desire this in as much as my Likeness in Oil & soon will be added the Marble Bust, and then perhaps a Bronse Statute,—a lavish ex- penditure I think of Vanity, & that without a Single member of eithur Board to indorse or sustain me in it! Will you please to lay this matter before your Ex. Committeeat your next Meeting. I intended to have Spoken to you yesterday on this subject, but other mat- ters engrossed my thoughts I forgot it &c—besides I was rather out of tune in point of health &c Yours truly, &c M. Vassar— Show less

Creator

1923-2010

Date

n.d.

Creator

Griffin, Charles, Miller, John, Campbell, Mildred

Date

[After 1950]

Text

JAMES FOSDICK BALDWIN 1871 - 1950 James Fosdick Baldwin was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1871. He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Thurs- day, Qctober the fifth, 1950. During forty-four of the seventy-nine intervening years, he was a member of the Vassar College faculty in the department of history. Hence it is to a fellow gildsman of long service that we now pay respect and honor. As Mr. Baldwin, setting about his most recent task of writing a history of the college in its modern era... Show moreJAMES FOSDICK BALDWIN 1871 - 1950 James Fosdick Baldwin was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1871. He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Thurs- day, Qctober the fifth, 1950. During forty-four of the seventy-nine intervening years, he was a member of the Vassar College faculty in the department of history. Hence it is to a fellow gildsman of long service that we now pay respect and honor. As Mr. Baldwin, setting about his most recent task of writing a history of the college in its modern era, sifted with trained eye and hand the boxes and volumes that constitute the college archives, - Presidents' cor- respondence, faculty minutes, committee reports, reports of departmental chairmen, and old files of the Miscellan News that recounted gala skits of Founder's Day, Ee must often have run across his own name and his own handwriting, for he had a zest for life and was ever an active partic- ipant in all that was going on about him. His courses in English history introduced him to large numbers of stu- dents and his circle of friends and acquaintances among alumnae was wide. His interest in every part of the col- lege was marked, - one could mention for instance certain of our library treasures, rare for a college of this size that are here because of his scholarly discernment and his initiative. Engrossing as was the campus to him, however, Mr. Baldwin did not forget that there were pleasures and obligations outside of it, that he was a resident of the town of Poughkeepsie, a citizen of Dutchess County and of his state and nation. He took a lively interest in public affairs to which his approach was that of a humanitarian and a liberal. Better also than some of us, he was able to transfer the field of his specialized interests to the scene at hand. Hence the student of constitutional origins in a distant age and place found ways of making Dutchess County origins exciting to his friends and fel- low townsmen. He held office repeatedly in the Dutchess C t Hi t ri i t ° l f i oun y s o cal Soc e y, and in 9h2 was o fic ally honored with the title, Dutchess Count Historian. Other community activities enlisted His support. His lifelong interest in music, found expression in his work as an organist in one of Poughkeepsie's churches, a post which he filled for years. After his retirement many of these interests were continued. Indeed, there was true gallantry in the way Jmnes Baldwin set about to explore Q 28 JAMES FOSDICK BALDWIN (Continued) the resources within himself in order to make his retirement a period both useful and happy. And it was a source of pleasure to his friends that neither old_ age nor adversity dulled his salty wit nor dimmed the twinkle in his eye. But beyond these memories left with friends and assoc- iates, James Fosdick Baldwin in his early manhood created a more lasting memorial through his contribu- tion to historical scholarship in a highly selective field, that of the Ehglish Medieval Constitution. His book on the Kin 's Council in En land Durin the Middle A es published §n Uxford In I§I§ was Hailed By scholarly journals on both sides of the Atlantic as charting new ground and superseding previous treatments of the sub- ject. It led to his election at once to membership in the Royal Historical Society, and gave him a place among the best scholars in the field in his own country. Even now after almost forty years it still remains a recognized authority. Hence, as Poughkeepsie notes the passing ofia good citizen and neighbor, and Vassar Col- lege a friend and colleague, medieval historians in both Europe and America record the passing of a respected member of their fraternity, the author of The King's Council. Charles Griffin John Miller Mildred Campbell XIII - 1&3 Show less

Creator

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1815-1902

Date

1896-08-01

Creator

Anderson, Kate M.

Date

May 14, 1864

Text

… … May 14th 1864 For Matthew Vassar Dear Sir Seeing something of your College, … … opened in September, in … lady’s book I have determined so adress you asking information concerning the seems & …. I have a … sister who is exceedingly anxious for an education. But we are not near a good school, and we are not very able, so can not send her to an … schoo. If the terms of your school are liberal we would like exceedingly to send her there we think hoping to hear more concerning it soon. I... Show more… … May 14th 1864 For Matthew Vassar Dear Sir Seeing something of your College, … … opened in September, in … lady’s book I have determined so adress you asking information concerning the seems & …. I have a … sister who is exceedingly anxious for an education. But we are not near a good school, and we are not very able, so can not send her to an … schoo. If the terms of your school are liberal we would like exceedingly to send her there we think hoping to hear more concerning it soon. I am yours with … From Matthew Vassar. K H Anderson Please address Miss Kale M Anderson … anne Somerset … Maryland1864 Miss Kate M. … … SOmerset … Maryland May 17 … Show less

April 13 A day of great brightness and beauty, but sharp; froze hard last night. While waiting for the little boat plucked my first hepatica, a small handful of them down by the river. Dear, welcome flower. Very happy these days improving my new lot. Blessed is the man who has a lot to improve, or who has some real occupation. How trivial and flitting the new generation seems to one -- of no account. The people whom we find upon the stage when we come into the world -- the old established... Show moreApril 13 A day of great brightness and beauty, but sharp; froze hard last night. While waiting for the little boat plucked my first hepatica, a small handful of them down by the river. Dear, welcome flower. Very happy these days improving my new lot. Blessed is the man who has a lot to improve, or who has some real occupation. How trivial and flitting the new generation seems to one -- of no account. The people whom we find upon the stage when we come into the world -- the old established people, they seem important, and like a partof the natural system of things. When they pass away what a void it leaves. Those who take their places, the new set, how inconsequential they seem . But they are for the most part the same class of[crossed out: people] persons, and will seem permanent and important to others as the old people did to us. So it goes. -- The Andover Review says that "in Christ God reconciled the world unto himself" How curious and absurd this jargon of the theologians does sound to an outsider. And jargon it is. Theology and the theological view of the universe is precisely thehe antipode of the natural or scientific view. There is no sense or reason in it. It comes down to us from the dark ages. It ruled the minds of men before science or the rationalistic view of things was born. Think of what trouble poor God took to reconcile [crossed out: him] the world to himself; what a curious and intricate scheme he concocted -- worthy a theologian He got himself born of a virgin, then grew to manhood, then became an itinerant preacher, then got himself crucified by the Romans and buried, then came to life again etc. etc. -- all to reconcile the world to himself, that is to appease his own anger20 April continues cool with very beautiful days now and then; no warmth yet. Last night I found the last remnant of snow bank on my grounds, no bigger than my hand. Very busy and happy on my new lot. Work hard all day, and sleep pretty well at night. The fox sparrows sing all about and cheer me. And the purple finch -- how finely he sings these days. The death of Matthew Arnold which came without warning the other day, has been constantly in my thoughts since. does it give a sad tinge to this April, or does April beautify and render more significanthis death? It does really seem to put a seal upon him as I think of him as I go about my work and hear the happy birds and see the grass springing. April can make even death beautiful. I look upon Arnold as the greatest critic of English literature, such steadiness, directness, sureness of aim, and elevation, we have not before seen. He had the best qualities of the French and he had something the French have not. He was not at all a miscellaneous man; he stood for certain definite things; he was like a through train always on time and only fetching up at important points. His poetry is wonderfully good, only for some reason it does not melt intoone and stick to his mind, as it ought to. As with all first-class men, his death leaves a vacancy that no one else can fill. April 27 The perfection of April days. Yesterday and today were and are ideal days. And a perfect day in April surpasses all others. Its sweetness, freshness, uncloyingness, and a sort of spirituality can be had at no other time. Still, brooding days, when every sound strikes musically upon the ear. The high-hole now his long loud call comes up from the fields on all sides. At night the full moon rises red and warm and the toad begins his long drawn and to me musical tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-rVery busy these days setting out currants. This morning the river is like a great mirror. This labor in the field gives me a keener relish for Nature. I get such glances from her, stolen glances. One may have too much leisure. But the laboring man does not get sated with Nature. He has not time. To him she is like a mistress who never fully indulges him. April 29. Sunday. Very hot, 85 degrees in the shade; hot and dry [crossed ou: all the] since Wednesday. Julian and I get our first arbutus to-day. Several of the little warblers here. Oriole came yesterday, but silent.May 1st Overcast -- light rain, cool. Go to P. to meet Mulford. He does not come. 6th A cool week with frost one or two nights; getting dry; no rain to speak of for several weeks. Very busy at the new lot. The summer birds are arriving fast. Wood thrush yesterday. A walk through the woods with Mr Buck and Mr Mason. Violets in bloom. The adders tongue unusually late this season. Often find it before arbutus. Maples late. These things vary much different seasons. Shad trees in bloom.22d A cool May so far, and very dry up to the 12th; then a fine rain. Apple trees in bloom for a week past, just beginning to drop their petals. The world very beautiful now, like fairy land. Still at work in the fields, and quite well and happy. One cannot keep his love for the land, the soil, without work. Work brings him close to it; he embraces it and loves it and strikes his roots into it. 24 Still cool with light rain. The apple bloom is beginning to strew the ground. My spring work about done; begin to feel as if I could lay off a little.On the whole it has been better for me than a trip to Europe. Every drop of sweat I let fall into these furrows came back to me in many ways. My sleep seems restored and my interest in things is much keener. -- One reason why this country is uninteresting to the cultivated foreigner, is that it is mainly the work or result of the modern industrial democratic spirit, while Europe [crossed out: is the] was mainly fashioned [crossed out: by the] during the age of poetry and romance, the age of chivalry, of lords and ladies, before the "average man" with his industries and rail roads and prose had come to the front.All the vest[crossed out: a]iges of that previous age are profoundly interesting to us, because we see [crossed out: it] them afar off; [crossed out: it] the age belongs to literature and poetry and art and romance. Man had not then lost the perception of and the desire for beauty. In this country the mass of the people are [crossed out: ???] entire strangers [crossed out: of] to the sentiment of beauty; they deform whatever they touch. Will it always be so? -- I believe mind to be just as insep[crossed out:e]arable from matter as Electricity is; it is not matter but a property or quality of matter. Electricity is not a thing; it is probably a mode of motion, of molecular motion.May 30 Go home to-day on morning train. Walk up form station with a burden of shad. Reach home at 11 1/2. Hiram and his men are seated on the stone steps waiting dinner. The old place looks green and fresh, apple trees just blooming. In afternoon walk over to Curtis's place to see Abigail. No one at home. Sit a long time on the door steps wrapped in thoughts of the past, and in gazing upon the familiar landscape about me. It is all sweet and good and I enjoy being alone at such a time and place. Walk up through the woods, the dog following me. He trees a woodchuck up a small smooth sapling.the chuck keeps his hold as long as he can, but presently his feet begin to slip; he can keep up the pressure no longer, and down he comes into the dogs jaws. -- 6:45 p.m Out on the hill in the woods on my way again over to see sister Abigail, the fresh green familiar scene about me, the hermit thrush singing in the mountain above me, the bobolink in the meadows, the air still and delicious; sky nearly overcast, robins warbling here and there, cattle lowing, orchards in bloom, fresh plowed land all about the distant landscape. Oh, that hermits flute, how it pleases me! 31. Warm and still. I walk up the road early in the morning to hear the bobolinks in the meadows, how they do sing, and very nearly song of my boyhood, only some slight variations. But the song up there towards the sky above the hill meadows is new; it is the song of the shore lark; presently my eye discerns the happy singer 2 or 3 hundred feet in the air flying round and round; when he utters his crude halting lisping song he flies in a peculiar manner, tail spread and very conspicuous, and wings slowly flapping. The song is only a faint copy of the sky larks. The bird sings 5 minutes after I [crossed out: see] discover him, then nears theEarth singing at intervals till within a hundred feet of the ground when he plunges straight down in true sky lark fashion. Then I go up on the top of the big side hill where the boys are plowing, dragging and sowing oats. Here I sit a long time and immensely enjoy the scene. Charley Grant is there and with his blind eyes sees the landscape in memory thirty years back. I tell him what is in this direction and what in that, and he seems to see it all again. Hiram sows the oats, and while waiting for the plow, sits in deep meditation on the wall. Then I go up to the Old Clump and spend [crossed out: a couple of] an hour on the top; three hermits are in song as I go up. The spring beauty in bloom on the summit. In the afternoon I go attended by a throng of memories, over to the stream below the school house and fish a little, and dream a good deal; take three fine trout, which are as well as three hundred, I walk over [crossed out: ???] about the site of the old school house and in the field where we used to play ball 40 years ago, and think of many things. I am tempted to go up to the spring where we used to get water, but I do not go. The spring is doubtless there, but where are the childish faces it used to mirror? Dead, many of them and scattered far and wide, the others.I return by Angie's house and sit [crossed out: and] an hour with her and John, then home again. June 1st A bright lovely day rather cool. At 9 a.m. I leave home and go down through Chase's fields and woods to the church yard. I sit a long time at the graves of my dead. It seemed for a day or two afterward that I had seen father and mother, so vividly did their images rise up before me. Two men at the stable across the way finally disturb [crossed out: me] and annoy me much. One was telling the other about his bakly horse, his voice was harsh as a grater and he keptthe air blue with oaths. I moved away and after a while came back again. Just such June days thousands of them they had seen, but not here they lie. I noted that [crossed out: Aunt] Aunt Olly died on the 2d of June 1839. The new made grave of H. K. Jr beside fahter's makes me remember that I had half hoped, half feared that my own place would be there. At 11 am I walk up to the village and pass the rest of the day with Smith and Emma. S. and I walk up the copper mine in the late afternoon. Then we try for trout, but get none. I stay all night and take early trainfor Homer Lynch's in the morning. Find Jane well; Homer in the lot dragging, not so well as when I last saw him; he is fast breaking, klled by overwork, or reckless work and exposure. In the afternoon we drive to Edens, Ursula with us. Edens folks well and at supper when we arrive. Margaret looks bad; she too is breaking. 3 Sunday. Cool and bright. Chant comes over with Hirams team and I go back with him, a fine drive over the mountains. Stay at Hiram's all night. 4 Leave home at 7. Hiram and I. H. walks down with me to the village, where I take the train for Olive.As I enter Father North's door I see him sitting in a chair looking old and feeble. It has been over a year and a half since I have seen him. He looks up an recognizes me, and is very glad to see me. He can hardly walk. I help him up and into the other room. We sit here several hours to-gether. He talks of the past and of the time he used to cradle and reap, and gets quite animated over it. Also of wrestling; back hold was his favorite hold. As I help him walk across the floor, he says, jocosely, that he is done dancing.June 20 Go down to West Point and with Denton and others make an excursion to tamarack swamps. A hot day. The great purple fringed orchids in bloom in the swamps, very fine. Am taken with a bad head ache; go home with E. P. Roe, who keeps me over night and treats me very kindly. 24 Very hot and dry. June has been a pretty dry month. Showers all around us to-day but only a sprinkle here. 28 An old fashioned rain from the N.E. and N. began in the morning slowly and has rained moderately till this midafternoon. Drew in the last of the hay yesterday. A good year for clover. Never saw more clover. A great dealof white clover, and being pretty dry, the bees have made clover honey. 30 A bright cool morning, June rounded and full. Curr[crossed out:e]ants nearly ready. This mornign the bees are busy in the chestnut trees gathering pollen. The trees by the road near Gordons, hum like a hive. A cuckoo calling a long time this morning in the old apple tree by the house; had a good view of him, the black billed species. In calling his manner and motions are much like a dove or pigeon in cooing. I have often noticed a certain resemblence to the pigeon in his eye and head, and now the resemblence is confirmed by his way of calling or cooing. He inflates his throat quite as much as the dove does and makes a visible effort to produce the notes. His tail moves at every note. The remote ancestor of the cuckoo is nocturnal in his habits, which the pigeon is not.July 7 Go with Mr Van Cleef up to Balsam Lake and spend three days; a very agreeable time. Cool and delightful. Eat and sleep at a great rate; take about 50 trout from the lake in all, nearly as many casts for each trout as it takes bullets to kill a man in war. On Sunday the 8th, go to top of Balsam mountain and get a glimpse of my native hills from the observatory there. Heard the hermit thrush; about the lake heard the veery, olive-backed and wood thrushes, the latter most common. On Sunday while fising on the lake saw some small objectswimming across the glassy surface. As I came near I saw it was a mouse, the meadow mouse. He dipped beneath the water as I came near, I saw it was a mouse, the meadow-mouse. He dipped beneath the water as I came near, but came to the surface again in a twinkling. His legs went so swift I could hardly see them. I put out my oar and he crawled up it. Then from the oar he came to my hand and cuddled up in it as if he was cold fixing his feet and cleaning himself and eyeing me keenly. After holding him awhile I put down in the boat where he remained nearly an hour, when he got disconcerted and boldly plunged over board and set out for shore again. The meadown mouse is quite at home in the water, only he cannot stay long beneath the surface. 12 Eventless days, mostly occupied in pulling weeds, hoeing and lounging about; full of sad thoughts about Walt Whitman, expect each day to hear of his death, and trying to taste the bitter cup in advacne so as to be used to it when it really comes. How life will seem to me with Whitman gone I cannot imagine. He is my larger, greater earlier self. No man alive seems quite so near to me in many ways. 14 A letter from Walt; he is better and my spirits revive. Weather very dry; no rain to speak of since early May.19 A fine pouring rain [crossed out: the] to-day, began at 4 in the morning; how delicious it was to hear it come down. Rained till nearly noon; then a smart shower at 6 p.m. Wet the ground pretty well. July so far very cool, especially the nights 24 Digging our potatoes for market, price high (3.75 dollars) but yield poor, owing to dry weather. May get back the expense and a little more, in which case the fun of the thing will not have cost me anything. All my hoeing, watering, killing of bugs, on Sunday and nights, will not costme a cent Nights still very cool, getting very dry again. In the potato patch a big spider with a young toad, body of toad about one inch long, spider has fangs planted in the back of the toads neck, toad soon succumbs, spider easily drags him along; when the toad is dead he leaves him and retreats into the shade under a weed. Toad soon turns dark color. Did the spider suck his blood? He did not come back and claim his prey. When Johnny was cultivating the grapes, one of the native mice starts up with her young clinging to her teats and scampers away. 25 Whitman still improving, so says a card from Phila. A great load is lifted from my spirits. -- Think of the myriads of peoples that fill the past, the great ocean. There in that sea of faces I see father and mother; how precious they look to me. Oh if they could only draw near and speak! -- The little mouse I saw swimming in Balsam Lake did not get as wet as a domestic animal would have [crossed out: done]. It was quite dry save on its legs and belly. Its fur shed water like a duck's feathers. 26 the July days go by and bring me little pleasure or interest. I pull weeds by spurts, read a little, and look after the farm work. I crave and need above all some one to talk to, some comrade, and quite a different home life from what I have, not the least companionship seems possible between me and wife, and Julian is still too young to meet the requirement. Aug 1st A warm day after the rain of last night, a stingy rain, considering our needs. A great downpour in P. and in R. but only about 1/2 inch here. All summer the showers have [crossed out: went] gone round us, as theydo nearly every summer. We get the skirts of the showers that go south and north, but seldom does a shower strike us fairly. Digging potatoes to-day, and pulling weeds, and long sitting i the summer house with book or magazine. But little relish for reading and none for literary work. 2d A cool, still smoky day, a real August day with a hint of fall. 3 I miss the indigo bird this summer; have hardly heard one; usually [crossed out: their] his not is very noticeable the long August days. I hope no ill has befallen him.4 A smart thunder shower after a very hot forenoon. It came black and portentious out of the north west, a very carnival of thunder and lightning. Have not heard such rapid explosives for many a day. Certainly no before this season. An inch of water fell in a brief time. -- How completely the world was once dominated by theological ideas, but how surely these ideas and ideals are passing away, and the world is coming under the sway of an entirely different class of ideas -- the ideas begotten by physical science and naturalism.The Evangelical churches [crossed out: ???] are slowly but surely giving up their theology, outgrowing it, getting ashamed of it. It is [crossed out: ???] moribund. [crossed out: and] They are trimming their sails to catch the new forces. Only the old mother Church, the Catholic, still abates not her superstitions. She has faced and weathered many a storm and she thinks she can weather this one, but she cannot. This is the flood, the deluge, and she must either float or be buried beneath the waves, or to vary the figure, it is not merely a change in the weather; it is a change like the going off the ice ageAug 5. While walking amid my new vineyard and lamenting the damage done by the rain, my attention was attracted by a [crossed out: bi] strange bird note high in the air. Presently I discovered the bird circling around as if undecided which way to go. It seemed lost. After a moment I know it to be an English sky lark. Its size, flight, and strong, harsh call note, were those of the lark. It finally went northward. We have not bird that looks just as that did as it flew swiftly across the sky.6 Wet and drizzly; no work today. Read Stedman a little, but soon tire. There is something fine and choice about his prose, and yet it does not ventilate the mind like that of the great writers. On the contrary the air is rather close and the view narrow. But such a poem as his on John Brown really makes a breeze in the mind. 12 Rain, rain, and cool. 15 Dr Burroughs and family came to-day. Immensely tickled to see him, a man to love and follow.16 A trip to the falls in the woods. Spend a couple of hours with the Doctor Julian and Johnny. Weather very hot and muggy. 17 Lawyer Proctor of Brooklyn calls and spends the day. Has some new things to tell me. He says some birds Earth them selves and some wash, and a few do both. The English sparrow does both, says that the mass of jelly like spawn in the pools in spring is by the liz[crossed out:z]ard; that it swells up after being deposited. Says the young of the box turtle keep under the ground till they are a few years old; are dirt color. A young farmer in N.J. told him this, which hehas found correct. That is why we never see any small ones of this species. He has switched a garden snake when a boy and seen the young come out of her mouth, and then run in again. He saw a cross between a monkey and a cat, and a cat and a rabbit. He is very prolix, but has real knowledge. He is a bachelor and says he has never known woman. 19 A delicious August day. We go to church in morning, and take a row on the river in the afternoon, a sweet day. 20 The good doctor and family leave to-day. Of all my relatives he it is whom I love most.23d A clear, bright, vig[crossed out:e]orous morning with a decided feeling of fall; must have come near a frost last night back in the hills. Sleep nearly perfect these days, and general healthy very good. From 24th to 27th at Onteora Park in the Catskills, a pleasant restful time. Sept 1st Alone in this house once more. Mrs. B. and Julian at Hobard since Thursday. A heavy rain last night and this morning. Warm, with breaking sky now. -- There seems to be some spirit or presence in the soil to whichvegetation acts as a sort of draft draught, just as the chimney is draught to the air in the room. This spirit or force finds an outlet and expression in vegetation. Hence when a tree or plant or vine gets established, how difficult it is to make anything grow beneath it. The current of growth seem to be all going out through the established vine. It is not merely a question of moisture and fertility, but the soil is preoccupied; its attention is all diverted into the old channel. Hence seeds lay dormant in the ground for years, with plenty of moisture and fertility about them, and only the vital force of the soil wanting. This finds an outlet through the other growths, check these andthe seeds germinate and spring up at once, like soldiers, to take the place of their slain comrades. 7 Very cold; a frost in some places back of the hill last night. Busy these days shipping grapes. 8 A heavy rain and warm. Go to P. to-day. -- The new book or essay must either add to our knowledge, or else it must tell us what we already know in such a way as to make us enjoy it afresh. If it is neither new in matter, nor fresh in treatment we do not want it. Can my books stand this test? I believe they can. 19. Start for Camden to-day. Spend a few hours in N.Y. and then to Camden about 4 p.m. Walt is lying on his bed when I enter his room. He looks and speaks as usual. I stand by his bed side a few moments, his hand in mine, and then help him up and to his chair, where he sits amid a chaos of books letters and papers, as usual. He talks and looks almost the same as usual. Is alert and curious when I speak. I note his hearing is poorer than when we met a year ago. I stay an hour with him, and then, for fear of tiring him, go over to Phila. to see Gilchrist. Come back at night and find Walt bright and ready to talk as ever. But we soon tire him, and so leave.20. This was one of Walts poor days and I do not see him, tho' I call twice. Go to the grave of Franklin, and gaze at it long through the iron fence from the side walk. How much it calls up and suggests. Visit the old State House and indepencence Hall also for the first time. In the evening see Walt for a moment to say good bye. He is partly undressed and ready for bed. He presses my hand long and tenderly, we kiss and part, probably for the last time. I think he has in his own mind given up the fight, and awaits the end.21 To Brille on the Jersey coast three days with the Johnsons. Beautiful country, like England, and the sea roaring away there in the distance. Weather cool and fair. 24 Back home to-day and find that Mrs. B. and Julian came back the day I left. Oct 6. Weather cool and wet; an unusually wet fall and cold, more rain I think, than even last fall. Health good these days, and my interest in the place, in grapes, and my vineyards etc. keener than ever.10 The first glorious October day, full of light and beauty. Spent it on the housetop mending my chimney. How my eye did rove from the work in hand. 14 Still cold and wet; rain, rain, and yet no severe frosts. Too much cloud for frosts, but when shall we have our beautiful autumn days? 15 A glorious day, too bright. 16 Rain, rain. -- After all would one not rather be a poet who could not be narrowed into a Cause, so large and sure and easy that no one could dispute him, tho' they might be indifferent to him. To excel on the common ground and with the accepted means and tools -- that is the best -- "The Whitman Cause" sounds provincial. 18. Fine day, full of color. 19. Rain, rain, rain. 20. Fine morning, clearing after the rain and quite warm 21. Clear and windy, and cold. 22. Mild, partly over cast. 23. Cloud and mist and light rain. 24. Rain in the morning, clearing at noon. 25 A lovely day, still warm, and brilliant, too fine to last. moving stone wall, and plowing etc. 26 Fair day of cloud and sunshine. 27 Rain and mist and fog. 28 Fog and mist and little rain, the ground covered with just fallen leaves. Signs of a cold wave.The gusts of wind bring down the leaves in great flocks. They look like the alighting of immense flocks of little and big golden birds. Maples will soon be stripped, some of them are so already. 29 Clearing weather 30 Bright and fair. 31 Fine day. go to P. in quest of a house for wife. Nov. 1 A lovely day at last; a perfect Indian Summer day. Thermometer above 60 for the first time in many weeks. 2 Still fine. Myron Benton comes at 4 1/2 P.M. Suddenly the world and life looks different to me, so glad am I to see him. For a moment the atmosphere of long gone days is over things again and the old joy in life comes back. 3d Cloud and light rain, clearing cool and delightful in afternoon. We go to P. 4 A perfect Nov. day, bright, cool still, no cloud, no wind, charming. 5 Fine day. 6 Warm, cloudy, threatening rain in fore noon, clearing in afternoon. Election day. Vote again for Cleveland; long since sick of high tariff. 7 Fine day. Election news bad. 8 Cloudy; slow rain in afternoon. 9 Warm, with slow rain in forenoon. 10 Mist, fog and rain. I notice that the wild carrots blooming this fall are quite pink; shows how a cool mild climate gives more color to the flowers as in England12. Go home to-day to see about Hiram's affair; an overcast Nov. day; drink again at the old fountain of youth; look again upon the dear familiar scenes. Walk over to Curtis's old house and down to J. S. Carroll's in afternoon. 13 Down to Olive this morning to see father North, doubtless for the last time. The old man on his back in bed; tells me he is almost gone. But he gets up in afternoon and sits in his chair, jokes a little and looks at times quite like himslef, and his mind seems unchanged, except a weaker memory. Slowly his sun is setting, and in a few months at most must vanish in darkness. A bright lovely day. the soft grindstone cuts the steel faster than the hard. It gives itself away more liberally. Nov 25 Sunday. The past week cold, clear and hard. Tuesday night the mercury fell to 18 degrees. Wednesday was clear and cold, Thursday the same, Thursday night another cold wave which sent the mercury down to 10 and froze over all the ponds, and made skating. Friday clear and cold and dry. Saturday, still, overcast. To-day a fierce wind from the north, almost a gale with snow which set in about noon. The flakes drive horizontally throughthe air. If this is but the introduction to winter, what prospect before us. If these days are the foothills, what are the mountains to be? How chilling the river looks through the veil of snow, lashed and foaming down there. The past week and part of the week before, at work in the old house, George R. and I. Have it now nearly ready for the masons. Dec. 2d Bright and lovely. I sit a long time on the old elm tree out by the spring and gaze upon my new land and plan and speculate about the future of my vineyard. In afternoon Julian and I go over to Sterlings and walk with Henry overhis land, advising him about planting vineyards etc. Coming back old Mr Sterling walks ith us and shows us the old road through the woods. the old Scotchman, I felt tender toward him, Scott and Burns and Carllyle walked beside me in him. 9 Much dark damp cloudy weather the past week, but no severe cold, and no snow. Plastered the old house. 10 A melting snow all day; an inch or two remaining on the ground. 14 Ground bare and hardly frozen, mercury down to 16 degrees this morning. A cold wave upon us. 15 Bright, clear, sharp, exhilarating move some trees.-- The best prose, the best criticism of whatever sort, is always creative like the best poetry. A page may be eloquent and brilliant and not be creative, I think Lowells prose is seldom creative. Matthew Arnold's is much more generally so. Arnold often quickens and satisfies one's deepest sesne. Goethe's criticism was often creative, so was St Beuves. Mr. Stedmans? I doubt it. Emersons prose at its best is creative. This is the test or proof that it is good prose. It feeds and stimulates the spirit. Creative prose gives me a sense of life and reality like that of nature. Ones mind is brought in contact with someting [crossed out: real and wo] palpable and warm. Mr Birrell comes nearthe creative touch at times, but I am not certain that he really has it. Indeed, I am not certain that any British critic, now that Arnold is gone, has it. I note it at times in Amiel's journal. The writer of creative prose always in producing it, experiences a kind of intellectual orgasm, as does the reader, if he be capable of it, in reading it. Vital prose is but another name for creative force. -- How many of the notions of mankinds are like the common one that the sun puts out the fire. The sun does put out the fire to the eye, but not to the pot above it. Its [crossed out: own] greater light eclipses the lesser light of the fire,but in no way does it check it. 17 Heavy rain of 36 hours or more. Ground chock full of water and frost all out. One of my tile drains unable to carry off the water. Last night Julian finished his school composition, and sat in his chair by the stove and read it to me. It is about "Papas Dogs", he has been at work on it many days. It is quite a production. 19 Bright sharp days, floating ice in the river; no snow to be seen. 21. Bright and pleasant. Go up to the school in afternoon to hear the speaking, compositions, etc. Julian is very anxious I should be on hand to hear him. He is quite embarassed when his turncomes, but he does well, decidedly the best of all of them. He speaks two pieces and reads his essay. His essay made them laugh. It was the second one he has written. His other described his tramp from Highland home two winters ago. It also made them laugh, he said. I am glad to see his mind take this turn. He does not look far off for a theme, like the other boys, but writes about something near at hand, that he actually knows about. His essay was in my own vein, and vastly more promising than anything I ever did at that age. It was areal piece of writing about my dogs. How curious it was to me to see him stand up there and read an original essay!22. Clear and cold, mercury below 10 degrees. Ice on the river stationary this morning (11 am). The bare naked earth aches with cold. 23 Bright and milder. 24 Lovely day without a cloud, looks like Indian Summer. Drive to P; roads dry and dusty. Thermometer about 40 degrees. 25 The mildest, finest Xmas I have seen in many, many years, soft and mild as October. Bees out of the hives. Thermometer 50 degrees on north side of the house. Feel well and enjoy standing about in the genial warmth and looking out into the soft hazy day, and upon the brown earth. 26 Still warm and pleasant. Bluebirds call in the air.27 A warm rain out of the sout hwest threatens to be severe. Reading "Tom Brown" to Julian these nights, and get very much excited over it myself. J. seems to think much about Martin, the "madman" as the boys called him. Dec 30. Day of great calm and beauty. A perfect winter Indian summer day. Here and there a floating mass ofice in the river like a stray cloud in a summer sky. 31. A mild cloudy day, a sprinkle of rain in morning. Drive to P. plenty of mud.1889 January 1st A bright warm lovely day, [crossed out: the] a copy of Xmas, no frost in the ground, no wind. Thermometer about 40 degrees. 2d Last night came Willie. Glad to see him, Eden's only child, about 23 years of age. To-day cloudy and mild, sun almost got through several times. 3d The mild gentle weather continues. Hardly a cloud to-day. Thermometer about [crossed out: 50] 44 degrees. At no time during the fall did we have ten days of as fine weather as the past ten have been. This weather was due us long ago but got delayed somewhere. Outlook for ice on the river very poor.1889 January 4 Still clear and mild. A strange winter calm. Is nature holding her breath, which will come by and by with de-doubled force? 5. Mild, overcast, with rain from the north at night. 6 Cooler, cloudy, with some rain. An eagle sat this morning a long time on the top of a tree down by the river. He looked as big as a turkey -- I notice that in the shallower water along shore the time turns much quicker than out in the deeper channel. 9 The 5th anniversary of father's death; Sat in my study and wrote. Warm rain from 11 to 4.10 Heavy rain again yesterday. Thermometer 50. Down to 40 to-day with high wind No frost in the ground, no ice on the river; river as free from ice as in May. The rye grows perceptibly. Mrs. B. and Julian start for Poughkeepsie to-day to board, the rest of the winter. It is my plan that we keep house here no more. I am to stay here a week or so and try again to write something. 15 A day of sun and calm, a kind of heroic Indian summeer, mercury down to 17 degrees this morning. No snow, not a speck of ice on the river. The little steamer Black resumes her trips to-day I [crossed out: ???] sit in my study by the open fire and look over some essays with a view to printing a new vol. "Indoor Studies". In afternoon I burn brush and help about hauling stone. A great calm over all Nature; not a cloud in the sky. Much worried about my dog, "I-know" who disappeared very mysteriously Monday morning during my absense in P. 16 Another lovely mild, Indian summer day. Thermometer 40 degrees. "I-know" turns up at Dr Gills where there are two sluts in heat. I thought surely he would come home with me, but no, he is crazy, like a man desperately in love, there is not spot on earth like that one. 17 A warm rain from the S.W. last night and this morning. Sudden heavy spurts this forenoon. Bees out of the hive. Clear at night with a full moon. 18 Day like a dream; the river a mirror, the sky a benediction. Florida days almost. Bees lively about the hives. Few birds this wintter so far, only a lot of gold-finches about, a few snow-birds, chickadees, and nuthatches and now and then a troop of blue birds. No ice in the river for ten days or more. First considerable snow about the 20th -- 8 inches, which drives me to Po'keepsie. Spend the rest of the month and all of Feb. in P. writing most of each forenoon; write another essay on Science and Theology, and a paper on Lovers of Nature, and some miscellaneous stuff, mostly of a theological cast. Feel pretty well, but one bad head ache and one attack of winter cholera. Mrs B. in one of [crossed out: hr] her tantrums the last of Feb. Weather a moderate uniform winter temperature, but little snow and no severe cold; thermometer down to 3 below once or twice. River closed up about the 1st of Feb. ice 6 inches thick. March 1st A bright lovely day, a good sap day; really feelslike Spring. Snow nearly gone. Walk over on the ice to Highland and back. Still life does not look very inviting to me. 3. Warm and spring like, rain in forenoon, only little patches of snow and ice left. 4 News this morning from Scotland that my friend Robert Scoular is dead. Made his aquaintance at Alloway in 1882. He visited me here in summer of 1886. A most hearty enjoyable Scotchman, a boy in enthusiasm and in his delight in life. While in this country everything he saw delighted him. Full of blood and spirits and health. I thought he would live to be 80. Some sudden stoppage of his breath by pressure on the bronchial tubes, probably from fat. What a delightful Sunday we once spent together on the "banks and braes of bonnie Doon", lying on the grass and strolling through the groves, listening to the birds! Show less

Date

1909?

Creator

Guttman, Ida (Frank)

Date

1883

Text

NATHAN FRANK OGDENSBURG, N.Y.WITH COMPLIMENTS OF BATES, REED & COOLEY, 343, 345 & 347 BROADWAY, NEW YORKInventory Sept. 14, 1883 5 6 towels. 6. Table Napkins. 11 -. 2 sets Flannel Underwear. 2 gauze wrappers. 7 pr. Drawers. 6 Under Waists. 5 night Gowns. 2 Aprons. 2 Flannel Skirts. 4 White Skirts. 2 pr. Corsets. 5 pr. Woolen Hose, 2 pr. Cotton. 2 Cloth Skirts. 3 pr. Shoes. 1 pr. Slippers. 1 Umbrella. 2 Hats, 1 felt, one Straw 1 velvet Hat 1 Black velvet Cap; 1 Gossamer 1 Fall Wrap. 1... Show moreNATHAN FRANK OGDENSBURG, N.Y.WITH COMPLIMENTS OF BATES, REED & COOLEY, 343, 345 & 347 BROADWAY, NEW YORKInventory Sept. 14, 1883 5 6 towels. 6. Table Napkins. 11 -. 2 sets Flannel Underwear. 2 gauze wrappers. 7 pr. Drawers. 6 Under Waists. 5 night Gowns. 2 Aprons. 2 Flannel Skirts. 4 White Skirts. 2 pr. Corsets. 5 pr. Woolen Hose, 2 pr. Cotton. 2 Cloth Skirts. 3 pr. Shoes. 1 pr. Slippers. 1 Umbrella. 2 Hats, 1 felt, one Straw 1 velvet Hat 1 Black velvet Cap; 1 Gossamer 1 Fall Wrap. 1 Winter sacque 1 Beaver New Market. 6 DRESS GOODS BATES, REED & COOLEY Dresses. 1 Black Cashmere Brown Lady's Cloth, Blue Velvet and Silk. Blue Jersey Cloth dress. Olive Brown Lady's Cloth. Red Wrapper. Green Silk. Electric Blue Cloth dress. Ecru Bunting Polonaise. Blue Cambric. White Muslin. Blue Flannel Dress.Diary 1883. 9 Sept. 15 Left Ogdensburg at 9 o'clock by U. and B.L.R.R. Mrs. Fulton, Hattie and Allie, and Hattie and our boys went over to see us off. Had very pleasant journey and arrived at N. Y. at 10 P.M. Hattie, Henry, and Rozelle met us at the depot. Sept. 16. Wrote a letter home. Trunk arrived at noon. Mr. Ed. Frank came to dinner and spent the rest of the day. In the afternoon made a very pleasant call at Cousin Hanna's. Kate and her husband spent the evening, and later, we went to the Restaurant. Re-10 DRESS GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. tired about twelve. Sept. 17..Cousin Hattie and I went down town, bought tickets for theatre, and did some shopping. Reached home in time for lunch. Received a Journal from home containing a notice of my departure, which I did not like. In the evening, Hattie, Henry, and I saw Lawrence Barrett at the Star Theatre (corner Broadway and 13th St.) in Francesca Da Rimini. It was grand and I enjoyed it immensely. It rained a little all evening, but not hard.SILK GOODS. 11 BATES, REED & COOLEY. Sept. 18. Hattie, Zell, and I spent the morning at Central Park. Met Aunt Bessie on the way. Hattie and I went to Kate's, 104 E. 90th St.,and stayed to dinner. In the evening Kate and Mr. K. took us three girls down to see the Brooklyn Bridge; and from there across on the Ferry to Hoboken to see some of his relatives who were to leave on a steamer for Europe next morning. Met a great many of his family. Stopped at an oyster restaurant coming back, and reached home very tired at 12.12 SILK GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Sept. 19. First day at Vassar. Expected to leave N. Y. at 9 A. M. but on account of a change found we must wait until 10:30. Hattie left us and went down town. Papa and I went to Arnold Constable & Co., where a gentleman showed us all around. Can't think of his name. Returned to the depot in time for our train. A young lady sat with me part of the time, who was on her way from Brooklyn to "St. Agnes" Albany. Name, Miss Gill, very pleasant. Hope to meet her again.SILK GOODS. 13 BATES, REED & COOLEY. Reached Poughkeepsie about 12:40, and took lunch at the waiting room. Took the street car on Main St. which brought us directly to the College gates. Rang the bell at the front door, and were ushered into the parlor. First girl I spoke to was Miss Belle Ward. After waiting some time, was taken to be interviewed by Miss Finch. Regents preliminary Certificate accepted; but cards, n. g. Too bad. First examined in U. S. History, next in Rhetoric. Passed in both. Supper at six. After finishing exam, was assigned room 118, a 14 SILK GOODS BATES, REED & COOLEY. 4th corridor. Papa then took leave for N. Y. Very good supper, apple sauce to be sure. After tea, Miss Hillyer, a sweet girl from Topeka, Kan. invited several of us "new girls" up to her room, and was very kind. As neither her room mates had arrived, she asked Miss Lyon and myself to stay with her, which we were glad to do. Was almost bitten up with mosquitoes and have not fully recovered yet. Sept. 20. Arose at 7. Took breakfast at 7:45. Made my bed. Took long examination in Latin Gram. and Caesar, and in French.SILK GOODS. 15 BATES, REED & COOLEY. Passed in both. Dinner at one. Examined in Algebra, and had short interview with Miss Hinkel, German teacher. Decided to continue my French for a while yet. Supper at six. Miss Ward spent part of the evening in my room. Room mate, Miss Shields arrived about nine o'clock. Very sweet pleasant girl. Retired at ten. Sept. 21. Arose at 7. Breakfasted at 7:45. Spent the morning on an examination in Geometry. Real hard, but passed. Went to the President's Office, where Miss Finch arranged my classes. Dinner at one. Did some un-16 SILK GOODS BATES, REED & COOLEY packing. Wrote a long letter home. Sent to Pokeepsie, by Miss Goldberg for a yard of calico, and partly made a wash bag. Supped at six. Chapel at 6:30. Made and received calls during evening. Retired at ten, as usual. Sept. 22. Arose, breakfasted, and made my bed as usual. First gathering of clothes for the Laundry. Read quite a long prayer. Dined at one. Spent the afternoon in my room, reading and talking to Miss Shields. Supper at six. Chapel at 6:30. Evening, calls. Retire at 10. 17 RIBBONS AND DRESS TRIMMINGS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Sept. 23. Arose at 7:45, breakfast bell. Late, but descended at 8:30. Made my bed, wrote two letters, then dressed and went to Chapel at 11. Visited reading room, and had dinner at one. Took a walk with Miss Wheeler. Called on Miss Ward. Supper at 6. Chapel at half past. Commenced Lucile in the P. M. Know I will like it. Miss Sweet, of Albany, spent the evening with me. Had a very pleasant literary conversation. She left at nine. I then undressed, and commenced my diary. Conse-18 RIBBONS AND DRESS TRIMMINGS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. quently all inaccuracy is from lack of memory. Lights out at ten. Sept.24.Arose before seven. Went down to breakfast at 7:45. Then went to Chapel, when our classes were given out. French, 2nd per. Room H, at 9:15 Lesson assigned and class excused. Purchased Lessons in Idiomatic French for 50 cts. Lexicologie for .30. Mathematics, 4th per. room 4. at 10:45. Lesson in Geometry assigned. Bought Chauvenet's for $1.00. Took lunch at 12:15. Finished my bag in the morning.19 RIBBONS AND DRESS TRIMMINGS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Latin, 7th per. room B at 2:00. Purchased Latin book for $1:00. Saved about $1.95 on books. Studied a little this P. M. Had dinner at 5:15. Had just returned to my room, when I heard papa was in the parlor. Hurried down, too delighted for anything. He stayed only about 20 minutes. Miss Goodsell came down by request for a few moments. Chapel at 6:30. Meeting of our corridor girls in Lecture room. Study hour from 7 to 8. Too tired to study very long. Will retire before ten. Good night.20 RIBBONS AND DRESS TRIMMINGS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Sept. 25. Arose about 7. Studied a little. Took breakfast at 7:45. Walked with Miss Mills for half an hour. Recited French from 9:15 until 10. Miss Johnson arrived. Like her very much. Went to Geom. at 10:45. Studied my Latin next period. Lunched at 12:15. Walked with Miss Van Zandt from one until half past. Studied until two. Recited "Cicero" until 2:45. Studied and talked until 5:10. Went to Lecture room to have our places at table assigned. Dinner until six.21 RIBBONS AND DRESS TRIMMINGS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Spent next half hour in my room with Misses Shields Johnson and Taggart. Chapel from 6:30 to 7. Studied until 8, and later. Lessons fair, first day. Room for improvement. Retired at ten, usual hour. Sept 26. Arose at quarter of seven. Studied from 7 to 7:45. Took breakfast. Came up and made my bed. Studied until nine. Went to Office, and received a letter from Ray Fischel. French from 9:15 to 10. Studied next period. Recited Geom. 4th per. Walked half an hour with22 RIBBONS AND DRESS TRIMMINGS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Misses Ward and Bemis. Took lunch at 12:15. Studied until 2:00. Recited Cicero 4th period. Walked 1/2 hour with Miss Gilchrest. Studied until about 15 minutes to 5. Washed and prepared for dinner. Dined at 5:15. After dinner, went with Miss Tyler to her room, where I met Misses Poppenheim, Perrin, and Winne. Miss Lyon also came in. Spent very pleasant half hour. Chapel from 6:30 to 7. Spent evening in our room. Did not study. We fixed up a little. Miss Dowdall was 23 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. here quite a while. Retired at ten. Sept. 27. Arose at 7. Studied until 7:45. Breakfast until after 8. Made my bed. Studied and recited at usual periods. Lunched at 12:15. Walked from about 12:50 until 1:30. Bought a French literature for $1,40; also some fruit and candy. Went out on the Lake for over 1/2 an hour. Delightful now. Dinner at 5:15. Spent from 6 to 6:30 in Miss Hillyer's room. Met there Misses Wilkinson, ..., and Anderson. Played muggins.24 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Chapel from 6:30 until 7. Miss Heller came up to our room, and she Miss Johnson, and myself studied French together. Miss Shields and Miss Dowdall then came up with three mush melons. Picnic. Talked until half past nine. Received clothes from the wash today. Nicely done up. Retired at ten. Sept. 28. Arose about seven. Studied French until 7:45. Ate breakfast. Studied French again with Misses Johnson & Heller until 9. Miss Shields then brought me up a letter25 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. from dear Mamma and Hattie, including a note from Minn. Oh joy! oh rapture! It just cheered me up. Very interesting and newsy. Recited next period. Came up, made my bed, and studied Geom. Recited 4th period. Studied the remaining time, with the exception of lunch time, until 2. Latin period, after which Miss Ward and I spent 3/4 of an hour on the lake. Exceedingly pleasant. Came in for Miss Heartwell and Miss Rand, and26 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. took a short walk. Prepared laundry list, and then got ready for dinner. Dined at 5:15. Went with Miss Tyler to call on Mrs. De Saussure. Met there Misses DeS., Halliday, Hancock, and Dean. Chapel from 6:30 to 7. Called on Miss Harvey, Miss Leech, corridor teacher Miss Lyon, and some other girls. Missed some callers while I was gone. Took a bath at 9:20. Retired at ten. Sept. 29. Arose, breakfasted and made bed as usual. Received a letter and P.O.or- 27 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. der for $5.00 from papa. Quite a surprise, a very agreeable one. Miss Heartwell, music teacher, invited me to walk to town; but I declined, as it is too far. Read prayer and other books. Spent a while in Miss Ward's room. Lunched at 12:15. Read "Lucile" most of the P.M. Walked an hour with Miss Ward and Miss Milk accompanied us part of the time. Misses Johnson and Shields went to P--, and bought sofa and curtains. Dined at 5:15. Chapel at 6:30. Spent evening in28 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. my room. Wrote New Year's letter home, and commenced a letter to Hattie. Misses Greene and Wallace called. Then Miss Dowdall came in and later Miss Hillyer and Miss Wilkinson. Latter knew Lou Ashley. Retired before ten. Sept. 30. Arose at 7:15. Breakfast at 7:45. Made my bed, and wrote a long letter home. Went to Chapel at 11. Spent from 12:30 until one in the reading room. Dinner at one. Walked from 2:10 to 2:40 with Miss Lyon. Came29 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. in and copied some French exercises, and then studied a while with Miss Johnson. Miss Dowdall, and Miss Taggart came in for quite a while. Wrote a letter to Hattie Fulton. Supper at six. Chapel at 6:30. Miss Briggs came up with Miss Shields and made a long call. Studied a while after she went, and then almost finished a long letter to Jennie Jones. Wrote in my diary, and retired at ten. Oct. 1. Real cold day. Arose, break fasted, made my bed,30 WHITE GOODS. BATES, REED & COOLEY studied, recited,lunched, and dined at usual hours, walked half an hour alone, and half an hour with Miss Bemis. Prayers as usual. Miss Heller was up here in the evening. Retired about ten. Oct. 2. Happy New Year. Would like to be at home today. Break fast at 7:45. Excused from all lessons. Read a long prayer, and spent most of the morning in my room. Lunched at 12:15. Spent about an hour and a half in the reading room. 31 LINENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. It rained very hard all day until about 3:30. Miss Hills and I took an hour's exercise. Went first to the orchard and got some apples, then walked around. Dinner at 5:15. Meeting of new students in Lecture Room at six. Addressed by Miss Goodsell. Chapel at 6:30. Immediately after, certain of the young ladies, myself included, were to go to the Lecture Room. Object, to see about Essays, &c. Are to meet Mondays and Thursdays, at ninth period. Miss 32 LINENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY Goldberg gave me a very pretty New Year's card. She also gave me a sheet of N. Y's paper, Saturday, on which I wrote home. She is from Jefferson, Texas. Miss J. and I studied French together for over an hour. Then Miss Goldberg came in and stayed until 9:35. Miss Patterson, Senior, was around to see about our getting collation tickets for Phil. day. Put our names down. Retired at ten. Oct. 3. Arose before seven. studied a while; break fasted at 7:45;33 LINENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. studied and recited as usual. Lunched at 12:15. Took part of my exercise on the Lake; then walked the rest of the time. Made my first visit to the Museum with Miss Shields. Had dinner at 5:15. Misses Poppenheim, Winne, Tyler, and Lyon were here between dinner and Chapel time, when we all went to prayers. Miss Heller came up to study French. Wrote a letter to Minnie Church. (How glad I would be to see her.) Was much disappointed not to34 LINENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. hear from home so far this week. Retired at ten. Oct.4. Arose and studied as usual, had breakfast at 7:45. Made my bed, studied and recited as usual. Had meals at regular hours. Took usual amount of exercise, partly on the Lake, and part walking. Went to the English class for first time. Must have an essay ready three weeks from today. This evening after dinner went to the parlor and danced with Miss Winne. A great many of the girls35 LINENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. go every evening, but chiefly old girls. Miss Heller came up again. Had seats assigned in Chapel last night and occupied them tonight for first time. Mine is in the 4th row from the front. Miss Patterson and Miss ... came to collect fee for Exoteric $1.00. I am now a member. Hope I will enjoy it. Miss Marchand was here for quite a while. Have not studied much to night. Will retire at ten. Am not satisfied with my diary; as it is36 LINENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. composed of only the facts without comments; but I have so little time, and so many come into our room. Of course I am always glad to have them; but when they are here, I can not write. Just the same with my letters. Wish they would send me some papers and letters from home. Must write to them to do so. This is all for to night. Bon nuit. Oct. 5. Arose at a quarter of seven; studied a little; had breakfast at 7:45; 37 WOOLENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. Made my bed; studied until 9; went down to the Office; "still not letter from home;" recited French until 10; studied then recited Geometry until 11:30. Commenced 6th book to day. Studied Latin until 12. Lunched at 12:15. Wrote a postal to papa. Walked 1/4 hour. Came in and studied Cicero. Miss Dowdall was here most of that period. Recited C. at usual time; after which started out to walk alone; met Miss Bemis, and we were out38 WOOLENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. until four. Went over to the Tennis grounds and met Misses Dudley, Krauss (?), & Botsford. On my return, filled out my laundry list. Studied a little; then dressed for dinner. Dined at 5:15. Made a very short call on Misses Knight and Motley. Misses Jones and Fox came in and stayed a while. Chapel at 6:30; after which we called on Misses Mills and Colburn. Did not make any more calls, as many were out. Miss Shields and I went39 WOOLENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. down to the store and bought some fruit, crackers, and butter. Lunched until bedtime. Miss Shaw came in and stayed all night with Miss S. Retired at 10. Oct. 6. Arose 7:15; breakfast at 7:45; made bed; went for mail; received three letters or rather six. Happy! Read and spent some time in the Library. Walked about fifteen minutes with Miss Van Zandt. Lunched at 12:20. Read in Lucile. Went down to Parlor J with Misses Jones and Johnson. Played on the40 WOOLENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. piano for first time in Vassar College. Went walking with Miss Ward. Number of young gentlemen strolling around the grouds. Several of the girls were in our room. Cutrains all up at last. Had dinner at usual time. Chapel also. Went to Exoteric with Misses J. S. & Mills. Danced and had refreshments. It was very pleasant. That is about all I can say of it. There is a little girl in college Miss Marshall of Nashville, who has attracted a good deal41 WOOLENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. of attention by her rather pretty face, peculiar walk. A good many remarks are made about her, some pro, some con. I do not admire her, as to me there is rather a fast look about her. She was quite the belle last night. The Misses Halliday came up with us from Ex. and stayed until 9:30. Retired at 10. Oct. 7. Arose about 7:15; took breakfast at 7:45; made bed; went to Bible class at 9; wrote to mamma and Hat. Chapel from 11 to 12:30. Walked till one; dinner till almost 2;42 WOOLENS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. read a little; studied French an hour; dressed and made a call; had supper at six; Chapel at 6:30; called on Miss Hartwell, Misses Goldstines and Hillyer & Wilkinson. At nine, went to an organ concert in Chapel by Miss Finch. Music very fine. retired at ten. Oct. 8. Arose at seven; studied; breakfast at 7:45; made bed; studied French until 9; received advertisement from P.-by mail; studied and recited Geometry as usual after French class; studied Cicero until 12; lunch43 FLANNELS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. at 12:15; went out at one and studied Latin with Miss Ward; recited from 2 until 2:45; rowed on the lake about 20 minutes; came in and studied until five; dinner at 5:15; note to Uncle Eli; Chapel at 6:30. Studied from 7 to 8. Had corridor meeting before 7; Miss Jones came up and stayed till almost nine; Miss Leech came to see me about changing place at table; am real sorry to leave Miss Hartwell. Took bath about 9:20. Retired at ten. Oct. 9. Arose a little before 7;46 FLANNELS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. day as usual; lunched at 12:15; spent about an hour on the Lake in the P. M.; was excused by Miss Goodsell for Thursday; had dinner at 5:15; made a call on Miss Leech; Chapel at 6:30; read a little in Lucile; had a very pleasant call on Miss Braislin. She is so kind and lovely. Met Miss Acker in her room. Came back to my room, and retired about 10. Oct. 11. It is Yom Kippur, and I have fasted all day. Arose after eight; received a letter from home; said a prayer47 SHAWLS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. for two hours; walked half an hour with Misses Shields and (Johnson) Greene; read another prayer in the afternoon; read other matter; walked an hour with the Misses Goldstine; dined at 5:15, pretty hungry. Missed our usual Yom Kippur supper. After chapel came up and studied till after eight. Went over to Music Hall, and bought some candy. Returned and studied until almost 10:30. Retired. Oct. 12. Arose about 7; had breakfast at 7:45; made48 SHAWLS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. bed; studied and recited French and Geometry as usual; prepared Cicero; lunched at 12:15; had an examination in C; walked an hour, part of the time in the rain; came in and found Miss Marchand here, prepared laundry list; dressed for dinner; dined at 5:15; spent half an hour in reading room looking over the Hamilton Lib. Became quite interested, as I found frequent mention of John D's name; also Dr. Miller's49 SHAWLS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. and Mr. Morey's. Latter seems to be studying law. Chapel at 6:30; called on girls in parlor 64; then on Miss Shulze, not at home; on Miss Hartwell, where I met Miss Farnham; on Dr. Allen with some of the girls; then came home; read some; Misses Shaw and Harvey came in; retired about ten. Oct. 13. Arose at seven; had breakfast at 7:15; made bed; got clothes ready for laundry; received a lovely letter from Hattie Fulton;50 SHAWLS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. read nearly all morning. went down to Miss Goldstine's room about 11:30; stayed till lunch, 12:15; received three papers from home; walked with Miss Rose G. from one to two; came in and read more or less until dinner time; had dinner at 5:15; called on Miss Goodsell for a little while before Chapel; prayers at 6:30; came up and began to get my French; Misses Taggart and Conkling came up to hear the story of the man said to51 SHAWLS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. have been in Miss Means' room. Hardly believe the story; but don't know. Misses S. and J. went down for some pickles; and we munched till bedtime; retired at ten. Oct. 14. Arose at 7:20; had breakfast at 7:45; went to reading room to learn Bible lesson; came up and made bed; went to Bible class at nine. wrote a letter to Hattie Houston; dressed for Chapel; wore my white muslin as it was so warm; services at eleven; dinner at one; took exercise52 SHAWLS. BATES, REED & COOLEY. and found some chestnuts; came in and wrote to papa and mamma, Hattie, Jennie Meyer, and Ray Fischel. (Dined at 5:15) Had supper at six. No evening prayers; but instead some missionary lecture; did not attend; Misses Goldstine came up with me from supper and stayed until seven; tried to study a little, but could not. Miss Trude Jones stayed all evening. Retired at ten. Oct. 15. Arose at 6:30; studied until breakfast, 7:45; made53 HOSIERY AND GLOVES. BATES, REED & COOLEY. bed; studied and recited French and Geometry at usual periods; received a nice letter from Julius and James; had lunch at 12:15; studied and recited Latin Prose; went chestnutting with Miss Pomerine; came in and studied some until dinner time, 5:15; spent a short time in reading room; attended a short meeting of Exoteric, special. Not as much dignity as Kalamathian; Chapel at 6:30; studied till after eight; called on Miss Lyon; Miss Dean and " (meaning "Miss") Jones stayed in our room 54 quite a while. Retired at ten. One thing I forgot. Subscribed for Vassar Misc. $2.00. Oct. 16. Arose after seven; breakfast at 7:45; made bed; made professional call on Dr. Allen; no prescription yet, am to go again Friday, may be before. Studied and recited all lessons as usual. Received a most interesting letter from Jennie Jones. Lunched at 12:15; went to walk about three; studied until nearly five; "Miscellany " was brought by Miss Ewing; Dinner at 5:15; wrote part of a letter to Dora55 Frank. Chapel at 6:30; attended lecture on art by Prof. Van Ingen from 7 to 8. Miss Heller came up to study French; but we talked most of the time; munched on crackers jam and pickles until bed time; retired at ten. Oct. 17. Arose after seven; had breakfast at 7:45; studied and recited all day as usual; received a letter from my dear mamma; lunched at 12:15; walked from 3 to 4; went to see Miss Finch about taking Virgil; not yet decided; A number of teachers and 56 pupils went to Newburgh to the celebration. Dined at 5:15; spent a while in reading room; Chapel at 6:30; Misses Kaufman Schreyer, and Marchand spent part of evening; studied and read until bed time. Retired at ten. Oct. 18. Arose at seven; had breakfast at 7:45; studied and recited all day, as usual; lunched at 12:15; received a message to go to Miss Finch at her office hour; walked 1$ of an hour; went to Miss F's and was admitted to Virgil Class, on trial. Am57 to go to her again Nov.1. Remained in V. Class but a few minutes; spent 3/4 of an hour on the lake with Miss Van Zandt; studied until 5; dinner at 5:15; wrote to mamma; Chapel at 6:30; studied from seven until nine; retired at 10. Oct. 19. Arose at 7; had breakfast at 7:45; made bed; went to see Dr. Allen, who gave me some medicine which was effectual; studied and recited at usual periods; first recitation in Virgil; walked an hour; heard part of a lecture given in Chapel58 by a Pinte Indian woman in costume, very good; dinner at 5:20; dressed and went to Chapel; called on Misses Anderson, Cowles (French teacher), Ward, Abbott, and Goldstine; a number of the girls were in till bed time. Retired at ten. Oct. 20. Arose 7:15; breakfasted at 7:45; spent a while in reading room; went to the Mail and received very interesting letter from Hattie; made bed; said prayer; read until 11:30; walked 1/2 hour; lunched at 12:15; walked another half hour; rained real59 hard; spent a while in library; read a little; girls came in and proposed a little spread for evening; buttered bread and prepared things; dressed for dinner; dined at 5:15; went to chapel at 6:30; Exoteric in room D at 7:30; went with Misses Kauffman[sic] and Schreyer, and had reserved seat; large attendance; exercises consisted of a farce "Who's to win him." Very good indeed. Adjourned about 8:15. Misses March and Dean, Wychersham; Schreyer, and Kaufmann[sic] spent most of60 evening in our room. Served chocolate and sandwiches; pleasant time. Miss Leach came and spoke about girls not being in their rooms by the twenty five minutes bell; second time she has been here lately. Retired at ten +. Oct. 21. Arose at 7:15; had breakfast at 7:45; studied Bible lesson; made bed; went to Bible class; dressed and went to Chapel; walked half an hour; dined at one; wrote long letter to Hattie; prepared my Latin Prose; had supper at six; no prayers61 this evening; wrote to Cousin Hat.; studied French a little, and commenced Essay; read a few minutes. Retired at 10. Oct. 22. Arose at 6:45; studied a little; had breakfast at 7:45; studied and recited as usual; lunched at 12:15; received four papers from home, which I had no time to read till this evening; took an hours exercise; dined at 5:15; read papers; Chapel at 6:30; Studied French with Miss Heller from 7 until 8 P.M. Studied Latin rest of evening. 62 Some of the girls here nearly all the time. Retired at ten. Oct. 23. Arose at 7:15; breakfasted at 7:45; made bed; studied and recited all day as usual. Received a letter from Hattie Honston; lunched at 12:15; returned my Virgil as Miss Kauffman lent me one; ... pens $1.30, consequently; took an hour's exercise; dined at 5:15; chapel at 6:30; studied till bed time. Nell Johnson had been sick all day and a great many have been in to see her. Time now to retire, 10.P.M. Oct. 24. Arose about 7; breakfasted at 7:45; made bed; studied and recited all day as usual; lunched at 12:15; was asked to take part in Exoteric, but have not time now; have to study real hard with four studies; took an hour's exercise, part with Miss Ward; dinner at 5:15; chapel at 6:30; studied all evening. Went to see Miss Clark; excused till Monday for Essay; obtained permission from Miss Leach to keep light burning until twenty minutes past ten. Retired. 64 Oct. 25. Arose at 7:15; breakfasted at 7:45; made bed; studies and recitations at usual periods. Examination in Geometry, Book VI; not hard; English class met; another essay in three weeks; received ... papers from home; forgot to say that I received letters from Papa, Julie, and Dora yesterday. Lunched at 12:15; dined at 5:15; took hour's exercise during the day; darned a pair of stockings, and did a little sewing; chapel at 6:30; studied nearly all evening. Retired at 10.65 Oct. 26. Arose about 7; had breakfast at 7:45; lessons as usual; began Book VII in Geometry; lunched and dined at usual time; walked an hour with Miss Mills; came in and made out wash list, and then dressed for dinner; spent some time in reading room; chapel at 6:30; did not make any calls; at eight went to chapel to hear a lecture on Greece, by a native; lasted two hours and was very interesting; illustrated by a stereopticon; 66 took my bath at 10:15; retired about a quarter of eleven. Oct. 27. Arose at 7:15; breakfasted at 7:45; made bed and prepared clothes for the laundry; received letters from Mamma and Heather; read "Through one Administration", by Mrs. Burnett, nearly all morning; lunched at 12:15; walked for an hour with Miss Tyler, and spent 1/2 hour in the museum. Miss Shields received a handsome brass placque for our room. Misses Symonds and Hassan were here for a while. Dined67 at 5:15; chapel at 6:30; spent most of the evening on my essay. Retired at 10. Oct. 28. Arose at 7:15; had breakfast at 7:45; made my bed; Bible class at nine; commenced a letter to Mamma and Papa; dressed and went to Chapel at 11; dined at one; walked half an hour with Miss Halleck; finished my letter and wrote to Heat. and Jule; studied French till after five; supper at six. Chapel at 6:30; called on Miss Heartwell; (out), Misses Hillyer, Wilkinson,68 and Hassan called. Studied some; talked to Misses Shields, Kauffman, and Schreyer. Miss K. has a decided mash on Lizzie, and is here nearly all the time. Have a miserable cold in my head. Retired at ten. Oct. 29. Arose at seven; had breakfast at 7:45; made bed; studied and recited as usual; lunched at 12:15; received a Bible from home; it rained all day, so I did not go out; dined at 5:15; darned a pair of stockings;69 went to chapel at 6:30; corridor meeting afterward; studied till after eight; Miss Jones came up and we made some chocolate; Misses Goldstine and Marchand came in and stayed until twenty minutes to ten; took foot bath and retired at ten. Oct. 30. Arose at 6:15; studied; breakfasted at 7:45; made bed; studied and recited as usual; lunched at 12:15; obtained missing clothes from laundry; received two papers from home; walked an hour;70 dined at 5:15; commenced letter to Hattie Fulton; chapel at 6:30; went to Miss Abbott's room with Miss Van Zandt to learn something about reading Virgil; studied good part of the evening; Misses Colburn and Milk called; retired at t0. Oct. 31. Arose before 6:30; studied till 7:45; had breakfast; made bed; studied and recited as usual; lunched at 12:15: walked an hour; dined at 5:15; studied til 8 , with exception of chapel time; invited Miss Kauffman, Schreyer, and Colburn71 in to celebrate Hallow E'en; first wrote names on slips of paper, put them in apples, and dived for them. My Apple had Mr. Coleman's name on it, one of Nell's Spring field fellows. next we had Neapolitan cream and cake, which we ordered from Smiths; climbed a sheet, played a few tricks; and altogether had a very nice time. Celebrated pretty well after all. Retired after eleven. October gone; Thanksgiving will soon be here. Hurra!72 Nov.1. Arose at 6:30; studied a little; had breakfast at 7:45; studied and recited all day as usual; lunched at 12:15; received a letter from Minn. Church, dear girl any way, though she waited so long before writing; wonder when I will answer it. Had examination in Cicero today and yesterday. Went to see Miss Finch and expect to stay in Virgil. Miss Dewitt, singing teacher died here today, and Miss Goodsell called a meeting in Chapel at 1:15. First death in College,73 since I have been here. Very sad. Received oil painting, tabourine, and velvet cap from home. All very nice. Walked an hour. Dined at 5:15; chapel at 6:30; studied French, wrote a postal home; ate candy and cake; "talked"; and retired at ten. Nov.2. Arose about 7; had breakfast, lunch, and dinner at regular hours; studied and recited as usual; went to English class for twenty minutes; walked an hour; did not dress till after dinner; read my four74 papers which I received from home; chapel at 6:30; called with Misses Ward, and Lowe on Prof. Braishir, Misses Finch and Hillard; all out or engaged; sent card up to Miss Clark's room, as I knew she was out; took bath at 9:20; retired at ten. Nov.3. Nell and Lizzie left for New York a little after five; I arose at 7:15; said prayer for Sabbath; received a letter from Hattie; settled laundry bill; obtained some ... and screws from Mr. Wheeler for 75 oil painting; went in to Miss Hartwell's for a few minutes, and she gave me permission to play on her piano in the afternoon; finished "Through one Administration", and like it very much; lunched at 12:20; walked an hour; practiced almost two hours at music hall; ...came up and bring my picture, which looks very nice indeed, and reminds me so much of home; dined at 5:15; spent time until chapel in reading room; chapel at 6:30; studied76 until about nine; Miss Poppenheim was here a while; girls returned about nine; retired at ten. Nov. 4. Arose at 7:20; had breakfast at 7:45; went to Bible class at 9; wrote or rather finished letter to Hattie Fulton; went to chapel; walked half an hour; dined at 1:15; wrote to Hat. and James; studied my Virgil; went to organ concert by Miss Finch from 5:30 to 6: then had supper; chapel at 6:30; called on Misses Hillyer and Wilkinson;77 came back and studied French, nearly all evening. Miss Hartwell has very kindly offered me the use of her piano for every Saturday P. M. Lovely of her. Miss Heller came up for "Second Wife." Retired at 10. Nov. 5. Arose at 7; had breakfast, dinner, and lunch at regular hours; most delightful day; received letter from Ray Fischel; walked half an hour, and spent the same length of time on the Lake; went to Reading room after dinner; chapel78 at 6:30; corridor meeting; studied all evening; took bath; retired about ten. Nov. 6. Arose at 7; breakfasted at 7:45; studied and recited all day as usual; lunched at 12:15; received a lovely letter from Belle Howe, and an advertisement from town. Was so glad to get the former; took an hour's exercise in the P.M.; dined at 5:15 in the French room; like it very well for a change, and hope it will help me with my French; wrote a letter to Papa and Mamma;79 went to Chapel at 6:30; studied remainder of evening. Retired quite weary at 10. Nov.7. Arose at 7; decided change in the weather; quite "breezy"; had breakfast at 7:45; studies and classes as usual; lunch at 12:15; Miss Conant called with her parrot; Nell and Miss Heller went to town; took my hour's exercise; dined at 5:15; read in Reading Room until chapel at 6:30; studied all evening. If I were at home tonight I would no doubt be at the Opera House to80 see Mrs. Langtry in "She stoops to Conquer". Would like to have the pleasure; but what's the diff? What can't be, can't be. Will hear all about it. [sentence in French] Almost ten, time to retire. Bon nuit. Nov. 8. Arose at 6:30; dressed and studied till breakfast time 7:45; studied and recited all day as usual; lunched at 12:15; received Catalogue of Eastman College; took an hour's exercise; dined at 5:15; spent remainder of evening as usual;81 retired at ten. Nov. 9. Arose at 6:30; studied; had breakfast at 7:45; lessons as usual; lunch at 12:15; excused from exercise on account of rain; did some mending; patched my "first elbow"; not so badly either; Nell is trying to break me of say[sic] "I don't know", so much; dined at 5:15; read "Hamilton Lit." in reading room. Only one name in it to interest me this month; Dr. Caldwell is absent so Miss Goodsell filled his place; consequence, prayer longer82 than usual, which is by far too long; called on Miss Colburn, Mrs. De Saussure, Misses Heller, Jones, Goldstine, Winne and parlor mates; all out but Miss C. Came home and read "Christabel" and "Among the Hills"; took bath, and retired a little after 10. Nov. 10. Arose at 7:15; had breakfast at 7:45; much disappointed to receive no mail; read a prayer; bought a hair pin; learnt a little of my French; kept Nell company while she worked; Lizzie had to go to Infirmary,83 on account of her eyes; but came back in afternoon; lunched at 12:15; received a circular from Eastman; Mr Hank from Springfield sent Nell a lovely basket of fruit; I spent a couple of hours in reading room, looking over the different college papers; walked an hour in the rain; practiced 3/4 of an hour on Miss Hartwell's piano in Music Hall; dined at 5:15; happened to ask Miss Brown in French room where her home is; she replied in Dansville;84 knows Ed. Money, his sister, and Miss Clara Whiteman Norman Marsh's "friend"; commenced talking English at a great rate; but Mademoiselle soon stopped up; told her we were excited at having found mutual acquaintances and could not speak of it in French; When we mentioned Bertha Holbrook, Miss Ellis from Antwerp, who sits next to me, asked if I knew her. Discovered she knows Bertha, Addis Whitney, Herb. Clarke, Alice Lawrence, and all the Gonv-85 ... crowd. Chapel at 6:30; meeting of Exoteric at 7:30; very good. First on program, "Greece in Flames" a burning candle; second "Things to Adore"; key, padlock, &c.; next a recitation by Miss Symonds; Maud Muller illustrated; very good, indeed; Farce "Courtship under Difficulties", very short having but three characters, Misses Welden, Dunham, and Hannah Patterson; after meeting, wrote part of my essay; retired at ten. Nov. 11. Arose at 7:20; had86 breakfast at 7:45; Bible Class at 9; finished essay; wrote letter to Hattie; dined at one; walked half an hour with Miss Ward; studied a while; at 3:30, went to Chapel; Pulpit occupied by Dr. Ferguson of the Five Points Mission, New York; there were with him fifteen of the Mission children, who sang very nicely , and also recited. One, especially, had a beautiful voice; copied my essay; had supper at 6; chapel at 6:30; commenced to study Virgil;87 Miss Brown made a long call; studied a little more; and the Misses Goldstine called; retired at ten. Nov.12. Arose at 6:30; studied; breakfasted at 7:45; studies and recitations as usual; received letters from Cousin Hat. and Sister Hat.; lunched at 12:15; walked an hour; dined at 5:15; chapel at 6:30; Prof. Dwight in the pulpit; studied and read papers from home; retired, after bath, at ten. Nov. 13. Arose at 6:30; had meals and recitations as usual; received letters from88 Mamma and Eleanor Couper; Nell had to go to Infirmary on account of a cold; so many sick; Lizzie has much trouble with her eyes; am very, very sorry and hope she will not have to go home. Walked an hour; wrote to Hattie Houston; chapel at 6:30; Prof. Drennan in Pulpit, and short prayer for a change; hope he will conduct the meetings while Dr. Caldwell is absent; studied till nine; retired at ten. Nov. 14. Arose at 7:15; had meals and lessons as usual; Nell still in Infirmary;89 Lizzie and Jean Kauffman sick all day; at least, inclined to be; took an hour's exercise; wrote to Mamma and Belle Howe; studied nearly all evening; retired at ten. Nothing new. Nov. 15. Arose at seven; studied, recited, and had meals as usual; received letters from Hattie, Julie, Leo and James; needless to express my pleasure; lovely in Hat. to answer my letter so quick; walked an hour; had English class; another essay Dec. 6th; interview90 Nov. 22nd in Miss Clark's room. Made short call on Miss Ward, it being her birthday; chapel at 6:30; studied some in the evening; Retired about ten. Nov.16. Arose about seven; had meals and lessons as usual; took exercise; chapel at 6:30; wrote letter to Hattie; Lizzie in N. Y. to see the Doctor. Misses Shulze, Rabe, and Nix called; Misses Jones spent the evening, made popcorn, and had good time generally; Lizzie returned about91 nine; can not study any more, and expects to go home soon; retired at ten. Nov. 17. Arose at 7:20; practiced an hour; meals as usual; went to town in the afternoon with Lizzie; visited Smith's, and several other places. returned home very tired; lay down all evening; Misses Jones, Briggs, Forbes, and Maloney were here during evening; retired at 10. Nov. 18. Arose at 7:15; had breakfast at 7:45; went to see Dr. Allen, as my throat92 felt a little sore. made me to to the Infirmary, and stay until Friday. Nov. 19. Spent the day in bed at the Infirmary. Received a letter from Hattie Judson. Nov. 20. Another day in bed. Letter from Jule; did not feel a bit sick; trouble with me, contagious sore throat. Nov. 21. Allowed to get up today; received "Advance" from home; studied a little Latin; played games with Jean Kauffman who is also in Inf. and in same room.93 Nov.22. Am one day ahead, but nothing of importance happened during preceding days, so no matter. Received while in Inf. a note from Nell, a rose from Miss Goodsell; a note and some flowers from the Misses Goldstine. Nov. 23. Came out of the Infirmary; everybody very nice and glad to see me. Went to classes as usual; examination in Geometry at hand. retired at ten, after attending a meeting of Exoteric.94 Nov. 24. Arose at 7:30; made long morning call on Miss Jones; called this P.M. on Miss Ward; borrowed her satchel; walked an hour with Miss Colburn; had interview with Miss Clark about my last essay; attended a Phil. play "Cricket on the Hearth", with the Misses Goldstine. It was very good indeed. Held in Music Hall. Large audience. Retired at ten. Nov. 25. Arose at 7:30; breakfasted at 7:45; wrote to Cuz. Hat; went to Bible Class at 9;95 chapel at 11: dinner at 1; walked half an hour; Miss Heller brought me up my ... materials; supper at six; spent a little time in reading room; studied more or less all day and evening. Retired at 10. Nov. 26. Arose at 7:15; took meals and recited as usual; received letter from Jule and check of $10 from Papa; did not go out on account of rain; commenced my banners; retired at ten. Nov. 27. Arose at 6:30; meals96 and lessons as usual; received letters from Hat. & Hat. Fulton; took exercise; went down to Miss Heller's for a little while after dinner; this evening attended very fine piano recital by Miss Stevens, graduate of the class of '82, who has been in Europe some time. Retired at ten. Nov. 28. Arose at seven; lessons all day; bought tickets to and from N.Y. Nearly all the girls went away on the P.M. train. Miss Howell and myself97 had a special street car. Met Hat. at the depot, and arrived in N.Y. at ten. Hat. was sick all the way down. Henny, Zelle, and Cousing Hat. met us at the depot. Nov. 29. Thanksgiving Day. went over to Kate's in the morning. Found her sick with a cold. Stayed until twelve. Abe and Ed. came up after dinner and stayed all evening. Cousin Hattie from Scranton came in the afternoon. In the evening, we had music, and then98 all took a long walk. Had lunch after our return. Nov.30. At 11:30, started for Hoboken to see Hattie off from Scranton; had lots of fun on the Ferry; spent some time on Broadway; walked from 14th St. up to 55th. Met Campanini on the street, also Jim Tallman and Turner. Spent the afternoon with PaulineSchloss; met there the Misses Davis, Meyer, Mayer, and several others. Did not go out in the evening. Dec. 1. Went with grandma99 to Aunt Bessie's; thence to Pauline's with Zelle; then down town; saw the Masonic Temple on five; went to Simpson;s and bought jersey; then to Huyler's; then home; received invitation to party Christmas Eve; returned to College on the 4 P.M. train; came out on the car with Miss Nassau; lent her 30 cents (in parenthesis); had lunch before retiring. Dec. 2. Heard neither rising nor breakfast bell; went to Bible Class and100 Chapel. wrote home and to Aunt; walked with the Misses Goldstine; studied; called on Miss Hartwell in the evening. Dec.3. Lessons as usual; first day of gymnastics; not assigned to any class yet; notheing particular happened, that I remember. Dec. 4. Was measured and weighed for gyms. Weigh 140 lbs.; belong to 8 P.M. class; received letter from Belle and Mamma. Dec. 5. Took part of my exam. in Geometry in the101 evening. Wrote and sent back my Jersey to Simpson's to have it exchanged. Only required to take half an hour's exercise now. Dec.6. No lessons today; received postal from Hat. saying she would arrive at noon; met her at the depot; went to Smith's for lunch; spent afternoon in the College; Hat. did not feel well; dressed about 6:30; and went down at 7:30; had good seats in chapel; exercises as follows; playing by the orchestra,102 "Poet and Peasant"; prayer by Dr. Caldwell; address by Miss McMillan Pres. of Phil.; Singing by Miss B... of N.Y.; playing by Miss Stevens; announcement by Miss Loomis, the Marshall. Collation in dining room; promenading in corridor and parlor, beautifully decorated; dancing and singing by College Glee Club. Retired a little after eleven. Hat stayed with me and Miss Beach with Nell. Very pleasant evening.103 Dec.8. Purchased some breakfast for Hat., as she could not go down. She concealed herself in the wardrobe while the maid did the room work. Received a letter and $5.00 from Jule. Went to dfepot with Hat., who left at 1:15; slept over an hour in the afternoon. Miss Brown called just before dinner and chapel in reading room. In the evening wrote letters to Mamma, Papa, boys, Dora and Ray. Got a bottle104 of mineral water from Dr. Allen. Retired at ten. Dec. 9. Arose at 7:35; went to Bible Class and Chapel; Rev. Dr. Elmendorf of Po'keepsie occupied the pulpit; wrote to Hattie Fulton; walked half an hour; spent a long time in reading-room; Misses Jones and Walratty called; studied all evening. Dec. 10. Lessons as usual; corridor meeting; took an exam. in Geometry in the evening; made105 out traveling list. Dec. 11. Lessons and everything as usual; received a letter from Jennie Jones; gyms. every night at 8; walk only half an hour. Dec. 12. No change from other days, only one day nearer vacation. Nell took my gold pin to town today to get it mended, walked with Miss Ward; she gave me an opportunity to trade ... with Hat. . This evening after gyms. went in to Miss Mill's room and stayed until 25 minute bell.106 Dec. 13. Lessons harder than usual today, especially Latin; went down to Mis Heller's room between dinner and Chapel with my work; short lecture by Miss Goodsell, subject "Advice for Vacation"; Miss Van Zandt came down to study Latin after gyms. Retired at ten. Dec. 14. Lessons difficult. Received letter and Check for $10 from Papa and Ma & letter from Hattie. Answered former. Walked an hour; in the evening107 called on Miss Hilllyer and room-mates; went to Exoteric at 7:45; meeting rather dull; after exercises, treat and dancing; took bath, and retired. Dec. 15. Had to report to Miss Goodsell, as I was marked absent from gyms. Thursday night by mistaken, made it all right. Received letter from Jule. Walked an hour very cold; trunk and hat arrived. Ticket agents came out with tickets, checks, &c.; made morning call108 on Misses Goldstine; wrote to Hattie Judson, Eleanor, Belle and Hat. in the evening. Well done n'est ce pas. Dec. 16. Went to Bible Class and Chapel; wrote to Jule and Mamma; prepared my French and Virgil; walked half an hour; called on Miss Brown; did most of my packing. Dec.17. Lessons as usual; first day of snow; trunk all packed and ready to go. Took hour's exercise; sent off box with ... in. 113 Dec.18. Lessons as usual until noon; left College at 12 M., Po'keepsie at 1:15. reached N. Y. at 3:45; two Hatties met me at the depot; did some shopping; found all well. Dec. 19. Received a letter from home; very stormy; spent a most pleasant day at Cousin Hannah's; returned home to dinner. Dec. 20. Went down town shopping in the afternoon; bought my cloak at Sterns;114 Met Gen. Judson on 3rd Avenue; had lots of fun. In the evening, went with Henry to the Casino to see the "Beggar Student". Dec. 21. Did not go out in the morning as Cousin Hat. was sick in the A. M.. Kate came over and we went to call on Miss Willard; During our absence, Mrs. Cohn and her daughter called. Received letters from Mamma and Minne; Abe came up and spent the evening.115 Dec.22. Went to the Temple in the morning; to see Geistinger in "Boccaccio" in the afternoon. Dec.23. Spent day with Kate; Abe came up after dinner and walked home with us; Ed was at Uncle's to supper, and spent evening. One of the coldest days of this winter. Dec. 24. In the morning, Hattie went to her painting, and cousin H. and I went shopping. P.M. we went over to Brooklyn, and116 called on Nellie Barrett. 115 or 159, I think, 6th Avenue. Received box from home Saturday containing dresses and Xmas gifts from Jennie and Hattie F. Dec. 25. Merry Christmas. Snowed very hard. Spent P.M. with Mirs Klingenstein; went with H... to see Ada Rehan in 7-20-8, in the evening. Missed callers, Miss Isidor, Messrs Halin, Isidor, and Simpson. Dec. 26. P. M. Went to Pau-117 line's to sewing class. Met Misses Seligman and all the girls; had a fine spread, and music. Dec. 27. Went to Cousin Hannah's to spend a few days; Mark was home from College, and a friend of his, Mr. Kelly stayed to lunch. P.M. Went in the carriage to call on Dr. B.; thence to the dress makers; rained very hard so made no more calls. Met all the boys and Mr. S. at dinner; had to play, of course,118 In the evening, six of us went to see Booth in the "Merchant of Venice" & "Katherine and Petruchio." Her is grand. Went to Bernard's restaurant; reached home at 12:40 P.M. Dec. 28. A.M. Wemt through Macy's, Tiffany's, and the Cathedral on 5th AVe. Met Pauline on Broadway. P.M. Cousin Hattie and Jennie Meyer called; was sorry not to see more of Jennie, but she119 made a very short stay. The evening Sabbath service was beautiful; Cousin H. wore an elegant white cashmere wrapper, embroidered down the front, and all trimmed with lace; very fine supper; lasted about two hours; we then adjourned to the parlors, where we ate and talked until nearly eleven. Dec.29. Went to 34th St. Schule in the morning. Dinner was not over until nearly three; Mr. Sondheim and Louis Blum-120 enthal called; left S-'s about 4:30; L. B. came home with us. Had a most delightful visit at Cousin Hannahs's. In the evening, Cousin Hat. went to the Freundschaft, and Abe took us to see the "Rajah", at the Madison Square. Went to Dorlans and had oysters. Reached home after 12. Found letters from Mamma and Hattie Fulton. Dec. 30. Wrote letters in the morning, and read. Uncle Ed. came up to121 dinner and stayed as usual. P.M. Addie and Julia Blumenthal called with Louis, and spent afternoon. Like them very much. In the evening, called on Miss Rosenthal, next door. Do not admire her in the least. Dec. 31. Last day of the year. Zelle and I went shopping in the morningl P.M. Hattie and I went to the Loan Exhibition: very fine and interesting; met the Brosnans from Brooklyn. Called on Mrs.122 Cohn, 269, East 61st St. Spent the evening at Mr. Jake Blumenthal's; met Lottie and Elias B. there; had a very pleasant time. The old year with all its joys and sorrows has departed; and with the bright New Year we will turn over a new leaf and begin a fresh page. 1883, Farewell.125 Sold or Rented. Virgil --- $1.30. Geometry --- 1.00 Botany -- R---- .75135 Sept.18 $18.00. 10.00136 April, 1883 11. $ 8 silk balls .75 1 pr. steels .17. 1 Collar .15 Cream .15 Car Fare .20 Founders Invitations. 1.20. Show less

Winchester N. H. Dec 11. 1862 Mr. Vassar Dear Sir I have just been reading of the Female College at Poughkeepsie founded and endowed by your liberality. I thank God that he has put it in your heart to do so noble a thing. You will be happy through all eternity for it. But just now I want to ask a few questions concerningit. Will it be open to young ladies out of New York? What age may they enter? How far must they go in their studies to fit for it? My husband is a clergyman with small salary.... Show moreWinchester N. H. Dec 11. 1862 Mr. Vassar Dear Sir I have just been reading of the Female College at Poughkeepsie founded and endowed by your liberality. I thank God that he has put it in your heart to do so noble a thing. You will be happy through all eternity for it. But just now I want to ask a few questions concerningit. Will it be open to young ladies out of New York? What age may they enter? How far must they go in their studies to fit for it? My husband is a clergyman with small salary. We have three children, all daughters. Our eldest is in her fourteenth year, a good scholar for her age, and intends to teach as a profession when qualified, and old enough. We would like to give her the advantages of just such a school, where the accomplishmentscould go hand in hand, with sterner studies. Would she come within the rules? If so please enter her name, Mary Frances Perkins, as a pupil, when the right time comes. If she is shut out, I shall still think of you with gratitude and thank you in behalf of the sex. New York is my native state, and when I remember my own meagre opportunities, I shall rejoice that a better time is coming. Yours Respectfully (Mrs) Sarah M. Perkins.P.S. Will you please reply soon. S.M.P. Show less

Creator

Wenssler, Michael

Date

1493

Creator

Gould, Julia A. M.

Date

May 21, 1864

Text

To Matthew Vassar Esq … May 21rd 1864 Sir Mr Hallenbeck spoke Vassar to Mr Vassar sometime since respecting my … the getting a situation in Vassar College to … … … open. He thought I wished her to obtain a position is teacher, but was mistaken. I am anxious … he should have the advantages of the institution as a … for one year. The had a … good … in the common. English Brothers and … given some attention to …, has been assisting her mother in teaching 2 years, in a … Mr Vassar is aware that... Show moreTo Matthew Vassar Esq … May 21rd 1864 Sir Mr Hallenbeck spoke Vassar to Mr Vassar sometime since respecting my … the getting a situation in Vassar College to … … … open. He thought I wished her to obtain a position is teacher, but was mistaken. I am anxious … he should have the advantages of the institution as a … for one year. The had a … good … in the common. English Brothers and … given some attention to …, has been assisting her mother in teaching 2 years, in a … Mr Vassar is aware that the … lost all he was worth in “578 “58 and that we have struggled to give our daughters the … of supporting therefore since that time. We were … by Mr Vassar’s … announcement sometime … to make this appeal if it is … with his plan and all the … not filled he would be conferring a … on her … for which the will be … grateful. Yours … … A. M. …Mr Julia Gold May 21/64 Show less

Date

19-Jul

Text

Life Sketch of czgawt can Slcudan by her Granddaughter NORA STANTON BARNEY Civil Engineer and Architect rd‘! Published on the 100th Anniversary of the day that 4 ex.-Quart eat, gfaafoa submitted the first resolution in the world demanding the Elective Franchise for Women Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York, on No- vember l2th, 1815. Her family was wealthy, judged by contempo- rary standards, and she could have lead a life of ease and... Show moreLife Sketch of czgawt can Slcudan by her Granddaughter NORA STANTON BARNEY Civil Engineer and Architect rd‘! Published on the 100th Anniversary of the day that 4 ex.-Quart eat, gfaafoa submitted the first resolution in the world demanding the Elective Franchise for Women Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York, on No- vember l2th, 1815. Her family was wealthy, judged by contempo- rary standards, and she could have lead a life of ease and luxury, but the seed of divine discontent was A within her. The sad lot of most women penetrated her soul at an early age, and she chose, instead, a life of continual work, hardship and battle. She had to contend with op- position within the family, also. Her determination to speak in public, and her stand for the enfranchisement of her sex caused her father to disin- herit her. Yet she was never hitter , and her dignity, humour, unbounded health and energy carried her through the ocean of ridicule, frus- trations, prejudice and intolerance to the ripe age of 86 years. She was ageless, , and could en- _ thrall my English and French cous- ins and me with stories of her youth as easily as she could move a vast audience with her oratory and logic. Her lectures and writings covered the whole ﬁeld of human progress———— “Motherhood”, “Sex”, “Our Boys”, “Our Girls”, °‘Woman Suffrage”, “Dress Reform ”, “Woman, the Church and the Bible”. She was a diligent Greek scholar and a great student of the Bible. She inveighed against the degraded position accord- ed to women by the orthodox churches of her generation. She was a Unitarian, and a firm believer in the brotherhood of man and the right to political and economic equal- ity of all human beings regardless of color or sex or race. Seneca Falls was her home for 16 years from 1847. The little town seethed with activity from the day she set her foot there, and on July 19 and 20,1848, the long-discussed plans of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott to hold a Woman’s Rights Convention were realized. One hundred well-known men and women attended and signed the “Declaration of Sentiments”, but it was Mrs. Stanton who moved the reso- lution that women should be granted the elective franchise, a motion sec- onded by Frederick Douglass. A storm of protest arose, but the motion was carried by a small margin. Over the cries of ridicule and denunciation heaped on the Convention and its sponsors by pulpit and press arose the clarion voice of Wendell Phillips. ————“This is the inauguration of the most momentous reform yet launched upon the world, the first organized protest against the injus- tice that has brooded for ages over the character and destiny of half the human race”————, and Frederick Doug- lass in “Lone Star” and Horace Gree- ley in New York Tribune published the only editorials in praise of the Convention and its objectives. Often reformers of one generation _ become the conservatives of the next. , Thiswas not true of Mrs. Stanton. She wrote a letter which was read at the celebration of the 50th anniver- sary of the 1848 Convention, which ended as follows: “. . . My message today to our coadju- tors is that we have a higher duty than the demand for suffrage. We must now, at the end of fifty years of faithful ser- vice, broaden our platform and consider the next step in progress, to which the signs of the times clearly point,———name- ly, co-operation, a new principle in in- dustrial economics. We see that the right of suffrage avails nothing for the masses in competition with the wealthy classes, and worse still, with each other. “Women all over the country are working earnestly in many fragmentary reforms, each believing that her own, if achieved, would usher in a new day of peace and plenty. With woman suf- frage, temperance, social parity, rigid Sunday laws and physical culture, could any, or all, be successful, we should see changes in the condition of the masses. We need all these reforms and many more to make existence endurable. What is life today to the prisoner in his cell, to the feeble hands that keep time with machinery in all our marts of trade, to those that have no abiding place, no title to one foot of land on this green earth? Such are the fruits of competi- tion. Our next experiment is to be made on the broad principle of co-operation. At the end of fifty years, whose achieve- ments we celebrate here today, let us reason together as to the wisdom of lay- ing some new plank in our platform. “The co-operative idea will remodel codes and constitutions, creeds and cat- echisms, social customs and convention- alism, the curriculum of schools and colleges. It will give a new sense of jus- tice, liberty and equality in all the re- lations of life. Those who have eyes to see recognize the fact that the period for all the fragmentary reforms is ended. “Agitation of the broader questions of philosophical Socialism is now in order. This next step in progress has been fore- shadowed by our own seers and prophets, and is now being agitated by all the thinkers and writers of all civilized coun- tries. “The few have no right to the luxuries of life, while the many are denied its necessities. This motto is the natural out- growth of the one so familiar on our platform and our official paper, ‘Equal Rights for All’. It is impossible to have ‘equal rights for all’ under our present competitive system. ‘All men are born free, with an equal right to life, liberty and happiness’. The natural outgrowth of this sentiment is the vital principles of the Christian religion. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’. In broad, liberal principles, the suffrage association should be the leader of thought for wom- en, and not narrow its platform, from ‘year to year, to one idea, rejecting all relative ideas as side issues. “Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions!” If she were living today, she would no doubt be a champion of civil rights and just as many unpopular causes as in 1848. She would be de- manding the full emancipation of woman and equality of rights under law, inveighing against intolerance and bigotry, imperialism and monop- oly, and championing the rights of the common man throughout the world. Until 1900, she held, the pre-emi- nent position in the feminist move- ment, not only in her own country but throughout Europe too. During the last years of her life, she was uni- versally known as “The Grand Old Woman of America”. Some of the high lights of her long life were: In 1848, was the principal organ- izer of the ﬁrst Woman’s Rights Con- vention, and moved the woman suf- frage resolution. In 1854, the ﬁrst woman to ad- dress the New York legislature from the speaker’s rostrum. She was president of New York State -Woman Suffrage Society in 1854. She helped form the ﬁrst National organization for woman’s rights—— The National Woman’s Suﬁrage As- sociation, and was its president from its inception almost continuously for 20 years (1869-1890). When later the American Woman Suffrage Association merged with the National Woman’s Suffrage Associa- tion to become the National Ameri- can Woman Suffrage Association, she was elected president. She made the principal address at the great Cooper Union mass meet- ing in 1861, calling on Lincoln to free women as well as the Negro, and enfranchise both. She ran for Congress in New York State in 1866. In 1869, when the family ﬁnances were at a low ebb and the education of the ﬁve younger children in jeop- ardy, she registered with the Lyceum hureau, and toured the country from Maine to Texas on the famous Or- pheum Circuit, earning from $100.00 to $200.00 per lecture. She did not stop this arduous work until Bob, her youngest, was graduated from Cornell University in 1881. She and Packer Pillsbury edited the periodical, “The Revolution,” from 1868 to 1871. She made the principal address when the W7oman Suffrage Amend- ment was ﬁrst introduced in Congress in 1878. She wrote her coworker, Su- san B. Anthony, who was lecturing in the West, an account of it. This amendment was identical with that ﬁnally passed in 1919 as the 19th Amendment (sometimes erroneously named the Susan B. Anthony Amend- ment). s The three ﬁrst volumes of the “His- tory of Woman Suffrage” early edi- tions, bear the legend, “Edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda, .1 oslyn, Gage.” She initiated the International A Woman Suffrage Committee in 1882, in England. On her 80th birthday in 1895, there was a huge celebration at the Metropolitan Opera House of New York City, with memorials and pres- ents from every state, anddmany from abroad. In the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, there stands a large goblet presented to her by the Wom- an Suffrage League on which is en- graved, “Defeated Day by Day, but unto Victory Born”. The reforms she advocated and for which she was ridiculed have largely come to pass: Higher education for women; won1an’s political enfranchisement; dress reform; short skirts; the aban- donment of corsets; the abandonment of swaddling clothes and tight ban- dages for babies; the abandonment of seclusion for women during preg- nancy; getting up soon after child- birth, and continuing one’s duties; liberal divorce laws; a single stand- ard of morals; equal guardianship; property rights, etc. But some of her demands of 1848 still remain unaccomplished, as for instance, complete emancipation of women so that they may have equal- ity of rights under the law, and the full protection of the Constitution. And with all this public activity, she bore and reared seven children, ﬁve boys and two girls. There is a letter from an admirer of hers, my grandfather, writing from Washington, January 16, 1857, to my aunt Margaret Livingston Stanton, then ﬁve years old. He said: “Tell your mother that I have seen a throng of handsome ladies, but that I had rather see her than the whole of them :————hut I intend to cut her acquaintance unless she writes me a letter.” My memories of my Queenmother, as all of us grandchildren called her, are of a delightful person to live with and play with. Backgammon, chess and checkers were our almost night- ly amusement. I have memories of men and women, colored and white, of high and low estate, seeking her counsel and advice. The mornings she spent writing endless letters and articles. During those years, 1897 to 1902, she wrote her autobiography, “Eighty Years and More”, and also “The Woman’s Bible” (her delight- ful commentaries on the women characters of the Bible and her inter- pretations) . Indefatigable to the end, the day before she died, she wrote a letter to Theodore Roosevelt urging him to include sponsoring woman sulirage in his inaugural address. A great writer, author, feminist, philosopher, orator and reformer, friend of Phillips, Douglass, Carri- son, Greeley, Whittier, the Brights and McLarens and feminists through- out the world, passed on into history the 26th day of October, 1902. The author lived with her during the last years of her life, at 26 West 61 st Street and 250 West 94th Street, New York City. Additional copies can be obtained by writing Box 436, Greenwich, Conn. Price 25 cents, postage paid. Show less

Creator

1923-2010

Date

n.d.

Creator

Vassar, Matthew, 1792-1868

Date

January 29, 1865

Text

Poughkeepsie Jan^ 29* 1866 My dear Mrs Hale I have delay^ answering yf note of the 23r. current for the purpose of acknowl=ing your article referd to regarding "Vassar College" but up to this hour it has not come to hand. I proceed to remark therefore that this is about my first attempt renewing my correspondence since the slight attack I had of paralisis a month ago to-day while spending a few weeks at the College during the Winter vacation term. I am now mend- ing quite fast and... Show morePoughkeepsie Jan^ 29* 1866 My dear Mrs Hale I have delay^ answering yf note of the 23r. current for the purpose of acknowl=ing your article referd to regarding "Vassar College" but up to this hour it has not come to hand. I proceed to remark therefore that this is about my first attempt renewing my correspondence since the slight attack I had of paralisis a month ago to-day while spending a few weeks at the College during the Winter vacation term. I am now mend- ing quite fast and am able to ride out every pleasant day, but not make calls as it is difficult changing these positions--------1 begin to be vain eneough to think that as you and many others of my good friends are often cautioning me so earnestly about my health or in other words to "take care of myself", that my life ]i^fi/\/^must be of some consequenceand therefore I am bound to do the best I can to preserve it, and with the help of Divine Providence will avail myself with every possible means to do so, altho1 at times I look upon my poor efforts for doing good as verry inefficient & of little service. I am happy to hear that your health continues good, but excuse me if I also forewarn you in overtaxing your self also, this was the primary cause of the failure of mine - We cannot spare your valuable services to the World yet, besides I must see my good friend Mrs, Hale before parting this transatory life - You have promised me a conditioned visit. I am doing my best to remove the barrier', and I not been prevented by my late illness would have apply,, to our Legislature now in session ere this - We require the written consent and application of all our Trustees, but as they cannot meet till June, must write or see each one personly - I do hope I may succeed because I know we are right in asking the change and besides which I have in my last Willand Testament devised another portion of my Estate to the "Vassar College" making it imperative on the Trustees to change the title if they wish to secure this last gift---- Through some oversight of mine I have neglected to pre-pay for the "Ladys Book", as it cease to come. Will you be so good as to hand Mr. Godey the enclosed $3, and tell him to forward it with back numbers since the year expired— Wishing you the usual complements of the season, with many spiri- tual and temporal blessings, I remain Dear Mrs Hale truly ' Your friend M. VassarMrss. Sarah. J. Hale Philadelphia Show less

Poughkeepsie September 15th 1860 Dear Miss Cleveland Your note of this morning is before me which among many others like [impart] I have carefully filed away as a testimony of the numerious[sic] wants of an Institution as that contemplated by the “Vassar Female College” etc. If in the good Providence of God my life and health should be shared untill[sic] next spring I hope to commence building, but considering the magnitude of the work it may require some two years from this time before it... Show morePoughkeepsie September 15th 1860 Dear Miss Cleveland Your note of this morning is before me which among many others like [impart] I have carefully filed away as a testimony of the numerious[sic] wants of an Institution as that contemplated by the “Vassar Female College” etc. If in the good Providence of God my life and health should be shared untill[sic] next spring I hope to commence building, but considering the magnitude of the work it may require some two years from this time before it can be opened for practical uses. Be assured dear Miss Cleveland your name will be early enrolled upon its records for admission etc. With much regards I subscribe myself Yours very Respectfully M. Vassar Show less